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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, we talked about the overlapping careers of rising 80s pop acts, Cyndi Lauper, the Bangles, and Amy Mann of till Tuesday. By 1985, Lauper had scored a string of hits off her quadruple platinum album. Till Tuesday had a huge single fueled by Mann's cinematic music video performance. And the Bangles were appearing in Cindy's videos and on her tour. But still looking for a hit of their own, all of these artists now had to figure out their next moves without getting pushed around by a medal. Middling, often sexist music industry, Cyndi Lauper had made some interesting friends in her rise to fame. One of them accompanied her to the 1985 Grammy Awards where she won a major prize, Best New Artist. When she went up to accept the prize, she took along a muscle bound man named Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan.
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And the best new artist is. Oh, Cyndi Lauper. And all the World Wrestling Federation Captain Lou Albano, who has gone on to become a movie star. And of course Katrine Dominique, who starred in all the videos with me and little special thing.
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That's Hulk Hogan flexing behind the podium next to Cyndi. He was more than her bodyguard. In her first flush of stardom, Lauper was co promoting the World Wrestling Federation at every turn. In her Girls Just Want to have Fun video, her father was played by pro wrestler Captain Lou Albano. Several more wrestlers made appearances in her Goonies Are Good Enough video. And when she premiered the Goonies clip on mtv, not only was Captain Lou with her, the broadcast devolved into playful WWF style trash talk when Rowdy Roddy Piper theatrically barged in. The greatest video of all time.
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I've never seen nothing like it, James. Absolutely fantastic, Cyndi Lauper.
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I've got to thank you, Dynamite.
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I know there's nothing like.
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Wait a minute. Pardon me one second. I would like to say. Yes, that was the greatest video I ever seen till you started to sing. I wrote the whole damn thing.
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You have to be in it. You wanted to be in it, that's why you.
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Lauper even played a sizable role in the first edition of WrestleMania in 1985 play, Acting as the manager of women's champion Wendy Richter. When Cindy got into a tussle at the side of the ring sportscasters covered the blow by blow and the fabulous Moolah has got Wendy Richter by the hair. Here comes Cyndi Lauper and we got.
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A melee on the floor, Geno. We got the managers on the floor going at it.
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Say it with me folks. This is what an imperial period looks like. For about two years, Cyndi Lauper could be the most flamboyantly outrageous version of herself, and the public ate it up. And they did, because the hits just kept on coming. With the brief exception of Money Changes Everything, which was only a number 27 hit in the winter of 1985, Lauper strung together seven top 10 hits between 1984 and 86, but the journey to those last couple of hits would test the limits of Cindy's Teflon reputation. Meanwhile, speaking of awards, Till Tuesday also received one in 1985 and it was also a Best New Artist prize. Appropriately enough, it came at the second annual MTV Video Music Awards in recognition of their captivating Voices Carry video.
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The winner of the Best New Artist.
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Of the video is Til Tuesday Voices. K.
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Yeah, I forgot that they were talking about us for a minute, so I'm gonna speak for the band. I guess. We want to thank DJ Webster and Julie and Tony Mitchell, mtv, for breaking our record.
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Thanks Dan.
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Thank you.
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As I said in a prior Hit Parade episode, best New artist is a dicey category at the Grammys or really any awards show, including the VMAs. In that it is predictive, implying that an act has many more hits to come. This would prove challenging for Amy Mann's band. By the time they won that vma, Till Tuesday's follow up single Looking Over My Shoulder had already peaked at number 61. And by year's end their third single, Love in a Vacuum missed the Hot 100 entirely. Still, the Voices Carrie album did crack the the top 20, peaking at number 18 and going gold. A promising start and Till Tuesday would spend much of 1986 recording their all important follow up album. Indeed, all three of our artists entered 86 hoping to avoid the sophomore jinx. Amy Mann and Cyndi Lauper risked underperforming their hit debuts, in Lauper's case a blockbuster. But the Bangles 1984 album All over the Place had only reached number 80 on the album chart. They likely had nowhere to go but up. They hoped to capture that energy on their next album, which they would title Different Light. To the four women of the Bangles, their sound was about both the singing and the playing. 60s style California harmonies juxtaposed with 80s garage style crash and Burn. Let It Go, a track written and sung by all four members for the next album, best exemplified this approach. But David Kahn, a producer who'd made his bones producing punk acts and had produced the bangle's debut lp, he went into the second album with other ideas at the behest of Columbia Records. David Kahn was determined to make Different Light the Bangles pop breakthrough.
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How could you do it? Stars like you to be the one.
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To lose To Khan, the Bangles were mostly about the vocals. He recorded their harmonies beautifully, but he had the group record numerous takes of their instrumental tracks to perfect them. Or he just brought in studio sidemen to replay the parts. For example, on their cover of the Big Star power pop classic September Girls, the vocals are all the bangles, but it's 60s style. Backwards guitar solo is a session musician. Khan also seemed uninterested in anything not featuring lead vocals by Susanna Hoffs, who was being pushed by the label as the bangle's standout star. Bassist Michael Steele later said that her moody composition, following one of the album's best songs, was recorded by Khan in just two takes.
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Why do you call me? Why do you look for me? Why do your eyes fall? Follow me the way you do.
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The thing was David Kahn and Columbia Records had reason to expect the Bengals were about to become pop stars. They went into the sessions with a foolproof song written and demoed by the most acclaimed chart topping megastar of the decade, six o' clock Already I was.
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Just in the middle of the dream.
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Prince wrote the song manic Monday in 1984. Like so many compositions by the prolific artist, he had multiple ideas of what to do with it. In that peak Prince year of 84, he almost gave it to his Purple Rain co star Apollonia cotero. While producing an album for the protege project Apollonia 6, Prince recorded a demo of Manic Monday as a duet with Apollonia. For his typical mysterious reasons, Prince kept the song off of Apollonius album. But then he met Susanna Hoffs. Prince had become a serious fan of the Bangles. He caught their LA gig at the Palace Theater and later told Hoffs that their song Hero Takes a Fall was quote number one in my car. Really, coming from Prince, that's about as high as praise gets. Prince liked Hoffs in particular. It has never been confirmed that the two dated, but what he did next has been widely regarded as an act of courtship. Through a mutual connection, Prinz passed Susanna Hoffs a cassette containing two unreleased songs, one of which was Manic Monday Hoffs brought it to the band who who instantly knew the song could be a Bangles track. The result proved utterly infectious and if.
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I Had An Airplane still couldn't make it on time.
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Manic Monday was unsurprisingly issued as the first single from the bangles different light LP in the winter of 1986 and it became their first ever single to crack the Billboard Hot 100 at Prince's request. The writing credit on the single was the pseudonym Christopher, but that wasn't fooling anyone. The public was soon clued in that Prince wrote the song. Recording a Prince Song in 1986 was all by itself a hit making insurance policy. But the notoriety also didn't hurt the fact that Susanna Hoff sang lead, the rumors about her and Prince swirling, and the song's bridge climaxing with this little Prince penned Come on, come on honey.
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Let'S go make some noise.
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All of that combined to make Manic Must Monday a smash. When the song rose to number two in April of 86, the song that kept it from reaching number one was ironically also by Prince. His chart topping smash with the Revolution Kiss. Three of the four singles the Bangles issued from the Different Light album wound up being covers. Their follow up single was written by Jules Shear. Remember him? I mentioned him earlier as the songwriter behind Cyndi Lauper's hit All through the Night. Jewel Shear never quite made it as a recording artist. This track, Steady Co written by Cyndi Lauper, was his only Hot 100 hit and it peaked at number 57 in 1985. But Scheer had a gift for a well crafted melody with a poetic lyric, and he formed several bands to showcase these songs. Bangles bassist Michael Steele in fact briefly played with his early 80s band Jules Shear and the Polar Bears. In 1986, the Bengals decided to try their hand at this song of his. If she Knew what she Wants was a little like Girls Just Want to have Fun. Originally written from a man's point of view, then Transform formed when women sang it, Shear's version is about a frustrated dude who can't figure out how to please his inscrutable girlfriend. But when sung by Susanna Hoffs with the Bangles harmonizing, The song takes on new meaning. It's the musings of a couple's mutual friends who know that the couple is doomed because both parties are incapable of making the relationship work. It's sad, poignant and beautiful.
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The next I find her crying and it's nothing she can explain.
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The Bangles if she knew what she wants reached number 29 in July 1986, Jules Shearer's second ever top 40 hit as a songwriter. Around this time, Shear began dating another introspective songwriter, Amy Mann. Over the course of their two year relationship, Sheer would wind up having an impact on her music as well. But in 1986, Mann already had her hands full, completing till Tuesday's second album, welcome Home. What About Love. The lead single from welcome Home was a continuation of the ethereal, moody pop sound of Till Tuesday's first album. Lyrics like Living on Silence, Living by the Book seemed to echo the themes of Voices Carry, reminding fans of what first attracted them to Amy Mann. It returned Till Tuesday to the top 40, peaking at number 26 in the fall of 86. But what About Love was not Amy Mann's first choice for a single. She felt much closer to The Welcome Home LP's second track, the Folky, guitar driven story song Coming Up Close. Amy Man's songwriting was evolving, but Coming Up Close peaked at number 59 in early 1987. Around this time, as if trying to prove she could not be pinned down, Amy Mann took a gig singing backup for, of all things, a Prague rock band, Canadian power trio Rush, Kings of Album Rock Radio, beloved by fans of meticulous instrumental chops and readers of Guitar Player and modern drummer, wrote the song Time Stands still thinking that it might have room for a female vocalist. As a counterpoint, their first choice for that vocal was, no kidding Cyndi Lauper, which would have been interesting when Lauper proved unattainable. They tried the Pretenders Chrissy Hind, who was also unavailable. They finally found their way to Amy Mann, who proved remarkably game. Mann not only delivered the song's titular phrase, she also showed up for Russia's music video, shot by cutting edge Polish film director Zbigniew Rybczynski. He had Mann pretend to be a camera office operator wheeling around a giant studio camera while the band played Times. Standstill became one of Rush's biggest radio hits, peaking at number three on Billboard's album rock chart in 1987. By the time Amy Mann recorded Time Stands still with Rush, she'd already become a seasoned studio pro. A few months earlier, she'd provided another backing vocal on the long awaited sophomore album by her label mate Cindy Lauper. The Faraway Nearby, a calypso flavored techno pop ditty, was about as unlikely a song to feature an Amy Mann vocal as a prog rock song from Rush. But it was hardly the only curio on Cindy Lauper's second album. The LP was packed with guests, and it was a hodgepodge of material. It included covers of songs by Marvin Gaye. And of the New Orleans standard made famous by the Dixie Cups and the Bell Stars, Iko Iko. Lauper also went back to her days with Blue angel to a modest retro doo wop song called maybe He'll Know. Now, possessing a bigger recording budget, Lauper Remains made this song with Billy Joel singing backup. It was a kind of payback to Joel, who earlier in 86 had invited Lauper to duet with him on Code of Silence, a deep cut on his album the Bridge. These were the circles Cindy was traveling in now. But the centerpiece of the album was a song written by pop songsmiths Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, who two years earlier had scored a number one hit writing Madonna's Like a Virgin. That song showed they could be arch and clever, but the song they offered Lauper was far more earnest.
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You with the F. Don't be discouraged oh, I remember it's hard to find courage.
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True Colors was a song of encouragement and support. Steinberg and Kelly pictured it being gospel flavored, like Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water. But Lauper heard it differently. To her, as she describes in this 60 Minutes interview, the song needed to get smaller.
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And then I realized it had to be a voice that whispers to you, A voice that's almost childlike, so that it would speak to the basic DNA, the softest, most gentle part of a human being. Then you'd hear a voice whisper to you and tell you it's gonna be okay.
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So Lauper recorded the song with a childlike vocal, turning off her zaniness and going meek. It was only when she worked up to the chorus that Lauper unfurled her full blast voice, and then only briefly before reigning that big voice back in. It was a very, well, unusual song for 1986. Spare and Gentle declaiming, but then receding. Though she had no hand in writing it, Cindy's arrangement of True Colors defined the song and made it a standard. While singing it, Lauper was picturing a friend who had died of of aids. This was at a very early moment in public acknowledgment of the disease and its toll on the gay community in the decades to come. True Colors would emerge as a perennial anthem for the LGBTQ community, just as the rainbow flag was becoming a pride.
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I see your tr.
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True Colors would be the first single from Lauper's new album of the same name. After nine weeks on the Hot 100. The song reached number one, her first chart topper since Time After Time in 1984. The next week, the True Colors album cracked the top 10 on its way to number four, matching the peak of she's so Unusual. For the moment, Lauper seemed to have dodged the sophomore jinx. So too had her contemporaries. While True Colors was ATOP the Hot 100, breaking into the top 40 were the latest singles by Till Tuesday. And by the Bengals, who were now promoting their third hit from the Different Light album, and it would become their biggest hit of all. Walk Like An Egyptian, a collection of near nonsensical lyrics and a shimmying dance beat, was written by songwriter and producer Liam Sternberg from Akron, Ohio. A contemporary of other Akron New wave acts like Devo and the Waitresses, The Bangles plucked the demo of Egyptian out of a pile of cassettes their producer David Kahn gave them, and they decided to give it a whirl. Three of the four Bangles sing a verse each of the song, everyone except Debbie Peterson, and in the video, Debbie seemed to be having the most fun shaking a tambourine and dancing up a storm. Speaking of which, there was a little dance to go with Walk like an Egyptian, an imitation hieroglyphics pose with your hands stabbing the air sideways. It was silly, but it was easy to do, not much harder than the Macarena or the baby shark. It helped make the song a smash. When the video for Walk Like An Egyptian hit mtv, kids began imitating the dance and teenagers were swooning for Susanna Hoffs, who takes the song's last verse and closes the video with a sly sideways eye glance that stole a million teenage hearts.
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Walk like an Egyptian Walk like an Egyptian.
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Cyndi Lauper's friends the Bangles were now out charting her When Walk Like An Egyptian cracked the top 40 in November 86, Cyndi Lauper's True Colors was in its second and final week at number one. Seven weeks later, the Bangles were on top. Walk like an Egyptian ruled the Hot 100 for four weeks into January 1987, and it wound up the number one song of that year. It sent the Different Light LP back up the album chart, where it reached number two and went double platinum. Two weeks after the album peaked, the Bengals were back in the top three as backup singers, supporting their pal Cyndi Lauper on her True Colors. Follow up, the number three hit Change of Heart.
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Oh, I'm here waiting for your change of heart it just takes a seat.
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The Bangles and Lauper continued trading off hits into the spring. The group's own follow up to their number one hit, the harmony laden rocker Walking down youn street, peaked at number 11 in April 1987. One month later, Cindy's synth pop cover of Marvin Gaye's legendary song what's Going on also reached number 11. These respective number 11 chart peaks meant different things to each act. At this point, the Bangles were ascendant. But for Cyndi Lauper, what's Going on became her first single to miss the top 10 in two years. That wouldn't have been so ominous if her next single, the peppy torch song Boy Blue, didn't miss the top 40 entirely, peaking at a lowly number 71. The Bangles, meanwhile, just went from strength to strength. Invited by producer Rick Rubin to contribute a song to the soundtrack, Less Than Zero, the group recorded a fierce cover of Simon and Garfunkel's 60s hit a hazy Shade of Winter.
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The sky is.
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A hazy shade of winter that reinvented the groovy folk song as stomping hard rock. By early 88, the Bengals hazy shade of winter reached number two, easily topping the the Simon and Garfunkel original, which had peaked in 1966 at number 13 in 1988. Amy Mann, meanwhile, was trying to write till Tuesday's third album while her relationship with Jules Scheer was coming apart. This was made more difficult by the fact that Shearer was now collaborating with Mann. He co wrote two of the album's songs, including the single Believed you Were Lucky. The third and final Till Tuesday album, Everything's different now, wound up a turning point for Amy Mann. Much of the album was about Sheer, her now ex paramore in a Romana clef fashion later made famous by Taylor Swift. One heart rending song was even titled J for Jules. The album won wide acclaim with critics noting the growth in Man's songwriting. But Epic Records wasn't really interested in promoting Amy soul bearing compositions. Believed you were lucky. The single man co wrote with her ex was a minor hit, reaching number 95 on the Hot 100. It did make the top 40 on both the Adult Contemporary chart and Billboard's new Modern Rock chart. As for Everything's Different now, it reached a dismal number 124 on the album chart and unlike its two predecessors, failed to go gold. Still, there was one more encouraging turn of events on that final Till Tuesday album that would serve Amy Mann well heading into the 90s, when she performed a track from the album on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman.
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I was not teaching you forever and never even got to camp.
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Accompanying her on guitar was a new band member, a 25 year old multi instrumentalist named John. Bryan Mann and Brian formed a friendship and an ongoing collaboration that would shift from Boston to Los Angeles and that would eventually reboot Amy Mann's career. The close of the 80s was a similarly scattershot time for Cyndi Lauper. It took her three years to follow up the True Colors album, which went double platinum solid but less than half the sales of she's so Unusual. In the interim, Lauper did a favor for her friend Pee Wee Herman, recording the theme to his Saturday morning kids show Pee Wee's Playhouse.
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Come on in and pull yourself up a chair. Hey Cherry, put the fun beginning time to wet down your hair.
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And Cindy tried acting, appearing in a flop 1988 film with Jeff Goldblum. Yes, Jeff Goldblum called Vibes. Lauper was fairly charming in the role of but the movie earned savage reviews. Bingo.
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Swedlin. What's he doing here? Remember what Harry said? Nobody's supposed to know why we're here. What if he asks? Let's dance. He'll give us a chance to think up a story.
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Moving back to the recording studio in 1989, Lauper turned back to songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. And as a reminder of the eternal truism that an artist is always just one song away from a comeback, they gave her one so good it momentarily broke her hit. Making Dry spell, I Drove All Night was a vintage torch ballad whose pre chorus, chorus and chorus were studded with big glory notes. Cindy gave the song her all, reminding pop audiences of the power of her voice. By the summer of 89, I drove all Night had brought Lauper back into the top 10, where she peaked at number six. The song sounded like an instant classic. How classic. The song was originally intended not for Lauper, but for this legendary vocalist who fortunately managed to record it before he passed away in 1988. Rock and roll hall of Famer Roy.
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Orbison I drove all night.
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To get.
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To you Is that all right?
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Orbison's version was unearthed posthumously in the early 90s, and it charted around the world in 1992, even cracking the top 10 in the UK, where it matched the number seven peak of Cyndi Lauper's version. And even that wasn't the the last go round for this song. You thought Lauper had a big voice. In 2003, Celine Dion took on I Drove All Night, though her version missed the top 40 on the Hot 100 Dion made the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary chart, and a remix reached number two on the dance chart. To this day, Cyndi Lauper's I Drove All Night does remain the highest charting pop version, But its impact on Cindy's career was questionable. Three decades later, both Roy Orbison's and Celine Dion's versions of I Drove All Night generate more streams on Spotify than Lauper's. And it did little for Cindy's 1989 album A Night to Remember, which peaked at number 37 and failed to go gold, never mind platinum. The only one of our three acts to score a chart topper in the final year of the 80s was the Bengals, but their 1989 was arguably the saddest of all. The Bengals issued their third album, Everything, in the closing weeks of 1988. It quickly generated a hit, the rocking, slightly psychedelic in your Room, which had reached number five on both the Hot 100 and the Modern Rock chart by the start of 1989. Featuring yet another one lead vocal by Susanna Hoffs, the gently risque song furthered the label's aims to position her as the group's de facto front person and sex symbol, a situation that had already been creating tension within the foursome. Hoffs had co written the song with Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. Yep, those guys again. They were busy in the 80s. But it was another song co written by Steinberg, Kelly and Hoffs that proved to be the Bangles.
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Waterloo it's meant to be Darling I watch you when you are sleeping you.
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Belong with me do you feel Eternal Flame, named by Susanna Hoffs after the fire burning perpetually at Elvis Presley's gravesite in Memphis, was a gentle ballad with old school bones. It was also primarily a showcase for Hoffs, whose lead vocal was more prominent than on any prior Bangle song. In essence, Eternal Flame was to the Bangles what Yesterday had been to the Beatles, a showcase for a single member disguised as a group project. The other Bangles do provide gorgeous backing vocals on the track. That's more than you can say about the Beatles, who weren't Paul McCartney on yesterday, but there's otherwise nothing. Not much for the Peterson sisters and Michael Steele to do, given the song's orchestration and its Susanna spotlighting arrangement. The rest of the group bristled at even including it on the Everything album, but the label pushed for it and then chose it as the LP's second single. By April of 89, it had gone all the way to number one. Already fraying, the Bengals went on tour in the summer of 1989. Barely speaking to each other, they insisted that the album's third single be a showcase for someone other than Susanna Hoffs. So they chose the song Be with you, co written and sung by drummer Debbie Peterson. But when B Will with youh stalled at number 30 on the Hot 100, it gave the label ammunition for their long running argument that Susanna Hoffs should be the star or go solo. At a band meeting in September at the end of the tour, Michael Steele said she was quitting and the label told the Peterson sisters they were no longer needed. Before 1989 was even over, the Bangles were done. Breaking up the Bangles was not what Susanna Hoffs wanted. Even her former bandmates, annoyed at the labels and producers machinations, knew that she was not scheming to push them out. Hoffs had merely been compliant with the star making machinery. Maybe too compliant. Back in 1987, while the band was still together, Hoffs agreed to let her filmmaker mother, Tamar Simon Hoffs direct her in a college romp called the All Nighter. The movie's poster featured a picture of Susanna in a bikini. And let's just say the film was neither a hit nor a cinematic gem.
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Oh, my mom's coming. She's totally neurotic about birth control. What did you get out of your four years at Pacifica?
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Okay, this is what I can't believe. I cannot believe I'm leaving this place.
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Without having my one earth shattering significant romance.
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In 1991, with the band now in shambles, the agreeable Hoffs played the game again, releasing a solo album on Columbia Records called When you're a Boy, produced by the band's old Svengali nemesis, David Kahn. In an interview, Hoffs later said, when I didn't have Vicky and Mickey and Debbie there to fight the fight, Khan went out of control. Pop Hoffs first solo single was not only slick radio pop far removed from the bangle sound, it leaned heavily on the image management the label wanted for her. Its title, My side of the Bed.
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I made a heart and a covered in red I want you here on my side of the bed.
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My side of the Bed peaked at number 30 in March 1990. It would be Hoff's only solo song to crack the pop top 40. In a way, it was a pity the Bangles didn't hang on into the 90s. They not only missed the next wave of alternative music, including proto Lilith female rock. Even the pop music of the early 90s borrowed moves from the Bangles, most notably the sisterly trio Wilson Phillips, who topped the charts several times with updated 60s style harmonies redolent of the bangle's blend of voices. Hoffs never released another album on collaboration Columbia Records. When they rejected her follow up LP in 1994, she left the label and moved to London Records, who put out the self titled Susanna Hoffs album in 1996. It featured a cover of a song by British indie pop band the Lightning Seeds, a sound much closer to Susannah's heart.
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All I want, all I wanna do, you better listen from now on stop what's going on stop what's going wrong.
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Other former Bangles joined their own 90s projects, bands such as Debbie Peterson's Kindred Spirit or Michael Steele's Crash Wisdom. The most enduring of these was Vicki Peterson's Team Up With Susan Cowcill of family band the Causills. They first formed the Continental Drifters, which lasted roughly a decade and issued multiple well received albums.
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You said about falling in love again you'd rather be dead when somebody breaks your heart you cry your eyes red.
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As for Cyndi Lauper, she took four years to come back with a new album, 1993's Hat Full of Stars, but it found her still adrift, casting about for a sound for the 90s. The first single, who Let in the Rain, was a soulful pop song that scraped the lower reaches of the adult contemporary chart. But the album was met largely with indifference both by the public and by her label, Epic Records, and it peaked at a dismal number 112. Again. As with the broken up Bangles, so, so much of 90s rock echoed what Lauper had been doing a decade prior, whether it was the post punk crossed with girlish vocals of Juliana Hatfield. Or the alt pop of Joan Osbourne. Her 1995 smash one of Us was written by the Hooters Rob Hyman, the same man who had co written Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time. Though Lauper did try her hand at alternative rock most of the especially the title track of her 1996 album Sisters of Avalon, She had far greater success in her 40s and 50s on the dance charts, where she was still welcome, especially by the gay community. A deep cut on Hat Full of Stars called that's what I Think brought lauper back to Billboard's Club Play chart for the first time in seven years, where she reached number 14. The next year, a reboot of Lauper's very first hit Girls Just Want to have Fun, retitled Hey Now, Girls Just want to have Fun and built around an interpolation of the 1974 Redbone hit come and get yout Love made charts around the world. It went top five in England, Japan and New Zealand. And in America, it propelled a 1994 greatest hits album to gold sales. The song was a mashup before the age of mashups. Lauper used her downtime between albums to take up acting again, this time to much greater acclaim. Her series of cameos on the hit NBC sitcom Mad about yout as the character Marianne Lugasso won Lauper a 1995 Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy series. Marianne Lugazo, this is my wife, Jamie.
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Hello. I like. I mean, I don't know you from nothing, but I get senses about people and I could tell you're one.
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But the artist who was working hardest to keep up with 90s music and experiencing the greatest frustrations was Amy Mann. Even more than Susanna Hoff's or Cyndi Lauper's woes with their labels, nobody got more of a raw deal from the music industry than man. Amy Mann spent nearly half a decade waiting out her recording contract. She managed to get off till Tuesday's label, Epic Records signed with a new label. Then that label got acquired by Epic. Eventually she landed at a new indie label, Imago Records, which did put out her solo debut album, whatever, in 1993. The label even got its single I Should have known to number 16 on the modern rock chart.
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In the Blood without the Kills. I Should have Known, kind of.
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But not long after that, Imago went out of business and Amy Mann's contract was acquired by Geffen Records, specifically the DGC label, which had famously hosted Nirvana. Mann arrived at Geffen with another modern rock hit, the number 24 that's just what yout Are, which was on the soundtrack to the TV primetime soap opera Melrose Place. Ah, the 90s.
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Changing cost. That's just what you are.
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Mann included that new hit on her next album, 1995's I'm with Stupid. But Geffen, distracted by bigger bands like Weezer and Garbage, did little to promote Mann's album, despite the fact that I'm With Stupid was packed with catchy tracks like Longshot.
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Could I be wonder, I wish.
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B
I'm With Stupid peaked at number 82 on the album chart in 1996. That was at least an improvement over the number 127 peak of 1993's Whatever. Both albums were produced by or co produced by Mann's friend John Bryan, who made the songs sparkle with Rich sonics and smart pop hooks. He also brought in seasoned players like his friend Michael Penn, musician brother of actor Sean Penn. Five years earlier, Michael Penn had scored a sizable pop hit with the number 13 peaking no myth, what if I.
- [53:54]
A
Were Rolly, oh yeah, Black Jeans, what if I Was in the.
- [54:03]
B
After he played on I'm With Stupid, Michael Penn and Amy Mann became friends, then started dating. In 1997 they wed and are still married to this day. Together they immersed the themselves in the music scene in Los Angeles, where man had relocated in 1995. As it happened, their friend John Bryan was the nexus of that scene, holding court at LA Club Largo for a weekly Friday night musical residency.
- [54:40]
A
Back in the day when they used to hunt for witches, they need to see if they float or they would drown before they burn them down.
- [54:59]
B
Mann and Penn were regulars at Largo, often sitting in on stage with Brian, as were such rising LA based artists as Fiona Adam Apple and Elliot Smith. The frequent club gigs kept Amy Mann sharp as she once again fell into record label limbo. When Geffen was swept up into the 1998 Universal PolyGram merger, DGC Records was folded into Interscope Records. Mann had already recorded most of a new album, but Interscope, led by famed executive Jimmy Iovine, had little interest in releasing the album unless she recorded additional material. Frustrated, Mann penned a song, Nothing is Good Enough, about how fed up she was with label executives telling her they didn't hear a single.
- [56:02]
A
Good enough for people like you have to have someone take the fall.
- [56:12]
B
One of the regular denizens of John Bryan's weekly Largo gigs was young LA filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. His 1997 movie Boogie Nights was a critical and commercial and indie success, nominated for multiple Oscars, and Anderson had begun planning his follow up. He wanted to use music by his new friend Amy Mann. Indeed, Anderson later claimed that the inspiration for his 1999 film Magnolia came from the opening line in one of Mann's.
- [56:52]
A
Songs, deathly now that I've met you, would you object to never see each other again?
- [57:08]
B
Anderson was evangelical about Mann's music, convinced it deserved wider recognition. He built Magnolia around her songs. Many were as yet unreleased, intended for Mann's commercially frozen third solo album. But the track that most inspired Anderson was not new, a forgotten ballad buried deep on the soundtrack to the 1996 film Jerry Maguire.
- [57:40]
A
It's not what you thought when you first began it.
- [57:54]
B
Wise up was a heartrending ballad that Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe acquired for the soundtrack but then didn't use in his film that left it wide open for Paul Thomas Anderson, who centered a pivotal magnolia scene around around Wise up, in which all the actors in his Altman esque LA fable were filmed singing the song to themselves and reflecting on their failures in life. Anderson helped me ratify Amy Mann's career as a hip LA artist far removed from her days in Boston. New waivers till Tuesday Grateful for the exposure, Mann recorded a new song, the moody Save Me, just for the Magnolia soundtrack and because it was exclusive to the film, it was eligible and got nominated for the Best Original Song Academy Award. Man performed Save Me live on the 2000 Academy Awards. Unfortunately, she didn't win the prize. The losing to you'll Be in My Heart Phil Collins ballad from the Disney animated film Tarzan. To this day, Mann dryly introduces Save Me as quote, the song that lost an Oscar to Phil Collins and his cartoon monkey love song. Emboldened by her Oscar nomination, Amy Mann finally exited the major label system, buying back her unreleased album from Interscope and launching her own label, Superego, to release it independently. As one song put it, man was quite literally calling it quits. She titled the long delayed album Bachelor Number Two, or the Last Remains of the Dodo. The extinction bird in the title was a sly commentary on the traditional recording industry. Bachelor Number Two contained many of Mann's best ever songs, including the Beatlesque Red Vines, an homage to her friend Paul Thomas Anderson.
- [61:13]
A
You Got a Cigarettes and Red Vines.
- [61:20]
B
Released in the spring of 2000, Bachelor number two went on to sell nearly a quarter million copies. A modest success by major label standards, but a blockbuster for Amy man, far more profitable to her personally than an Interscope release would have been. Her next independently released album, 2002's Lost in Space matched those sales and brought Mann back to the top 40 on the album chart for the first time since her till Tuesday debut. Lost in Space peaked at number 35. So Hollywood had rejuvenated Amy Mann around the same time, the movie business did much the same for the Bangles, Mrs.
- [62:26]
A
William.
- [62:29]
B
Tea. In the mid-90s, Susanna Hoffs and her friend songwriter and guitarist Matthew Sweet formed a side project Just for Laughs with comedian Mike Myers, a faux British 60s band they called Ming Ti. The project helped inspire Myers time traveling British spy character Austin Powers, which led to his 1997 sleeper hit film Austin Powers International man of Mystery which was directed by Hoff's filmmaker husband Jay Roach. In the film Ming T perform a shagadelic would be British invasion hit called BBC. Jay Roach then teamed with Mike My Myers again in 1999 for the sequel Austin Powers the Spy who Shagged Me and this time, Hoffs convinced her old friends the Bangles to reform for the soundtrack. The group recorded get the Girl for the Powers sequel, and it was a loving throwback to their Paisley Underground origins.
- [63:47]
A
No matter, matter what, you're gonna gonna get better girl the girl.
- [63:54]
B
Get the Girl could have been a one off, but now that they had reformed, the Bangles spent the next four years touring together, which generated enough momentum for them to record a new independently released album, 2003's Doll Revol.
- [64:16]
A
Tear off your own head, Tear off.
- [64:20]
B
Your own head, named after an Elvis Costello song that they covered for the album. The rest of the tracks on Doll Revolution were penned by the four band members, some of them remakes of songs they'd recorded for their various 90s projects. In a 2003 interview, Vicki Peterson marveled at how good it felt to be working with her old band again. Quote we would look at each other and go, but we're not suffering. Is it art? Nobody's suffering. We're all laughing and having dinner. The aughts was also When Cyndi Lauper seemed to come out the other side, she not only embraced her status as an icon to the LGBTQ community, she doubled down. Lauper went deeper into club music. Her 2008 album Bring you to the brink generated two number one singles on Billboard's Club Play Play chart, Same Old Story and Into the Nightlife, her first toppers on that chart since Girls Just Want to have fun in 1984. Between that and her perennial appearances at Pride marches, often to perform her hit True Colors, Cindy had deepened her bonds with a loyal fan base. And then her friend Harvey Fierstein came calling. Fierstein was adapting Kinky Boots, a 2005 British film about a family shoe factory that saves its business by teaming with a drag queen to make men's fetish footwear, he was turning it into a musical. Fierstein was writing the book of the musical, and he needed to recruit someone to write the music. Quote I saw an opportunity to work with someone with a big musical range, somebody who could write club music along with show tunes, fierstein said. Cyndi Lauper identified with drag queens, and she was a lifelong Broadway fan, but she'd never written a musical before. Fierstein guided her in the principles of writing for the stage, but he left the music up to her. Lauper more than filled the bill, immortalized on stage by future Tony winner Billy Porter. Her Kinky Boots score one universal acclaim, drawing upon both Lauper's affinity with drag culture and her melodic skill. Lauper even released a version of one of the songs herself, scoring another top 10 club hit in 2012 with Sex in the Heel.
- [67:37]
A
The sex is in the heel, even if you break it.
- [67:45]
B
Kinky Boots opened on Broadway in April 2013 in time for that year's Tony Awards, where the musical took six prizes, including best musical and best Actor for Billy Porter, as well as best Score, which went solely to Cyndi Lauper. She became the first ever unaccompanied solo female composer to win the prize live on the Tony stage. Lauper was in shock and deliriously happy.
- [68:19]
A
Okay, I know no laundry list, and I can't say I wasn't practicing in front of the shower curtain for a couple of days for this speech. All right, I gotta thank my mom for sharing all that wonderful music. I wrecked all her Broadway musicals when I was a kid. The cast albums, that's how I learned how to sing. And I want to thank Broadway for welcoming me. You know, this city. I understand how hard you work, and I've never been a stranger to hard work, but your hard work inspires me.
- [68:58]
B
By the way, that's a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony for Cyndi Lauper earned for her singing, acting and composing, respectively. She's one Oscar away from an egot. In short, all of the heroines of our story today had their careers rejuvenated by another extra musical art form. The movies for Amy Mann and the Bangles, the stage for Cyndi Lauper. They retook control of their art by looking beyond the vagaries of the major label music business, which then brought life back to their music. The Bangles continued touring right through the 2010s, their last gig to date, about six months before the COVID 19 pandemic started. Now a trio, bassist Michael Steele departed the band once again in the mid aughts. The Peterson Sisters and Susanna Hoffs have reconnected with their garage rock roots. In 2013, the Bangles played a Paisley Underground reunion game, And five years later they joined the other Paisley bands, Rain Parade, the Dream syndicate and the three o', clock on a joint album covering each other's 60s inspired material.
- [70:34]
A
I know I'm Talking in My Sleep, Sleeping in My Dreams, Dreaming On My.
- [70:46]
B
Feet and Amy Mann. She's making the promotional rounds as I speak for her 2021 project, which is rather Cyndi Lauper esque Queens of the Summer Hotel, an album that doubles as a stage adaptation of Girl Interrupted. Susanna Cason's famed 1993 memoir of her time in a mental institution. If anyone can make that material musical, it's Amy Mann. She hasn't stopped exploring new vistas and always on her terms.
- [71:23]
A
You think there's no one there to hear your plea.
- [71:39]
B
That includes her live performances on stage. Mann ranges widely over her vast catalog, sometimes accompanied by her husband, Michael Penn, or friends like John Bryan, Ted Leo, or, in this clip, Jonathan Colton. And she will even take that first hit of hers out for a spin.
- [72:02]
A
One last song. This song I wrote a very long time ago and for one I didn't play it because I thought parts of it were kind of dumb. And then recently I sort of feel like it's weirdly appropriate and I'm not sure why, but we're going to play it tonight. Jonathan Colton, please come and help us.
- [72:19]
B
Play it's the hit that didn't need a movie soundtrack or a Broadway musical to find its audience and bring the drama it was in widescreen from the moment Amy man dreamed it up. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Asha Saludja. Asha is also my producer for our monthly Hit Parade the Bridge shows, available exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, journalist Rachel Brodsky talks about about her recent interview with the Bangles Susanna Hoffs and about the group's legacy. To sign up for Slate plus and hear that show and all our shows the day they drop, visit slate.com hitparadeplus June Thomas is the senior Managing producer and Gabriel Roth the editorial director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanvi.
- [73:50]
A
Don't.