Cyndi Lauper brought her career-spanning “Girls Just Want to Have Fun Farewell Tour” to her hometown of New York on Wednesday night, dazzling the sold-out Madison Square Garden crown with her incredible voice and charmingly quirky stories.
Lauper’s Madison Square Garden show on Wednesday comes days after Donald Trump and his MAGA fans held a hate-filled rally at the New York arena. Earlier in the day, Lauper posted a video of herself dancing on social media and wrote “doing an interpretive dance before my show to restore love and light to the Garden.”
During the show, she also alluded to Sunday’s Trump rally: “We need a lot of love here tonight to dissipate a lot of the hate that was here.”
Lauper talked about her ealy days in New York and walking past the post office building on Eighth Avenue and memorizing the motto, “Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
“That’s me,” she said, before launching into another hit song.
This was Lauper’s first time headlining at Madison Square Garden, and she regaled the enthusiastic crowd with lots of funny stories and underwent several costume changes on stage.
Before performing “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough,” from the 1985 movie, The Goonies, Lauper told the crowd she recently met the actor Andrew Garfield, who mentioned that he identified as a Goonie. As she belted the song, the very 1980s music video — featuring wrestlers “Captain” Lou Albano, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Wendi Richter, and members of the movie’s cast — played on screens behind her.
The 71-year-old recently told Rolling Stone‘s Rob Sheffield, “I haven’t done an arena tour since ‘86. I’m excited because I get to have all these fantastic young women on tour with me. So many years, I was told I can’t do a women’s tour because nobody will go see it. ‘Women don’t sell like men sell.’ Then I toured with Cher and we played for a million people. So bullshit.”
Lauper’s vocals were in top form on Wednesday, wowing the crowd with hits like her cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine.”
Lauper’s white drapey top doubled as a projector screen during the performance of 1989’s “I Drove All Night.” The original music video for this song, had a similar effect.
When the song was over, she joked, “I still can’t parallel park for shit.”
Lauper recently told Rolling Stone‘s Rob Sheffield that she found her voice by making a “mistake and went with it, because you know, strong and wrong, right? You go wrong, stay strong. You can’t change. You have to just stay there.”
As she changed into a long, black, tuxedo-like dress with a feathery train, Lauper informed the audience that Christian Siriano, the designer, told her she needed some dramatic looks for the tour because “the gays need glamour.”
Lauper then took off her Tweety-Bird-yellow wig and propped it on the mic stand next to her. “Glamour takes a second, guys. It’s not just glamour, it’s art.” She performed “Sally’s Pigeons,” a song about a childhood friend who died as a result of a “back-alley” abortion, while wearing her wig cap.
Sam Smith joined Lauper on stage for a heartfelt version of “Time After Time.” The duo previously performed together at the White House in 2022, when President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law. The arena glowed as thousands of fans turned on their cellphone lights during the song.
Lauper never stopped moving as she belted out a banging “Money Changes Everything” and eventually rolled around on the stage and mixed up with members of her backing band.
At one point, Lauper moved over to a second stage, set up at what would be half-court at a Knicks game.
Lauper loves to combine music and art and her show at the Garden show was no exception. She performed “True Colors” with a multi-colored scarf that seemed to be something of a dance partner at times.
Lauper spoke about her organization Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund, which, she said, collects funds for “safe and legal abortions… women’s healthcare, prenatal care, postnatal care, cancer screenings — women’s health.” She also encouraged the thousands of women in the crowd to vote to take care of themselves.
The finale was, of course, the anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Lauper and her band performed in red polka dot outfits from the artist Yayoi Kusama and the screens on stage displayed similar patterns.
Lauper’s next stop on her farewell tour is Nashville.