Cyndi Lauper's Band Failed and She Went Bankrupt. Her Voice Was Still Hers.

Cyndi Lauper spent much of the 1970s singing in New York bar bands. In 1974 she was a backup singer and dancer in Doc West, a Long Island cover band, singing disco material she did not love. She moved on to a more rock-oriented group called Flyer. Between gigs she supported herself with ordinary work; Rolling Stone reported she had been a waitress, a painting-class model, and a karate instructor, among other jobs.

By 1977, years of straining through cover songs had badly damaged her voice. Her voice teacher, Katie Agresta, later recalled that when Lauper first arrived she could only whisper, and that doctors had told her she would never sing again.

It was not a quick fix. Lauper worked with Agresta for about a year on exercises, warmups, and diet, rebuilding her voice step by step. It came back, and she kept training.

In 1978 Lauper teamed up with songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John Turi to form Blue Angel, a band with a retro, Fifties-influenced sound. They landed a record deal, and their album came out in 1980. Critics noticed her voice, but the album did not sell.

The band fell apart, taking with it the project she had spent several years building and leaving her without a band or a record deal. After a falling-out with their former manager, he sued the group, claiming about $80,000 in unpaid fees, according to Rolling Stone. Lauper filed for bankruptcy, which Rolling Stone reported was granted in the winter of 1983.

While her music career stalled, Lauper kept working and kept singing. She sang oldies at a Japanese piano bar in New York and worked at Screaming Mimi's, a vintage clothing shop on the Upper West Side. Rolling Stone noted that the shop was where she developed many of the fashion ideas that later became part of her famous look.

Those years were not wasted. The style she would become known for grew out of a retail job she took to pay the bills.

Lauper met David Wolff, who became her manager and her boyfriend. Through him she connected with CBS executive Lennie Petze and producer Rick Chertoff, and she began recording as a solo artist with CBS.

Her debut album, She's So Unusual, came out in 1983. It featured "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and "Time After Time" and became the first debut album to produce four Top Five singles. Lauper won the Grammy for Best New Artist.

She did not get there alone. A voice teacher, a manager, a record executive, a producer, and the musicians on the album all played a part, and a record company was willing to take a chance on a singer whose previous band had failed.

Lauper's work continued well past the 1980s. She wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2013, and she won a Tony for its score. In 2025 she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She also founded the True Colors Fund, an organization focused on acceptance for LGBTQ people.