In 1979 Robert Hazard recorded the demo for a little song he wrote about who lucky he was that there were so many girls who wanted to have some fun – with him… which wasn’t a big hit. But as the label, Columbia, owned the rights they asked producer Rick Chertoff to do something with the song. Which he did a few years later, by suggesting it to newly hired Cyndi Lauper, suggesting she’d edit the lyrics to a more feminist point-of-view. She was working on her album with his old bandmates of “The Hooters” at the time, and after experimenting with a number of different musical styles they together transposed “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” into what would become the anthem for female attitude in the 80ies.
The album, “She’s So Unusual” was a huge success and contained four top-five songs, the first debut by a female artist ever to do so. “True Colors” was another one of those and it evinced a strong theme in Lauper’s work even more: acceptance. While most videos at the time depicted staggeringly beautiful people rarely seen in real life, she insisted on having hers populated by normal gals and guys, leading regular lifes. And as “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was to be an anthem for all women it was important to her that they all were represented in the video, irregular of race, body type or alleged flaws – what should go without saying these days took a long time in the making.
The video also features what at the time were mind-blowing never-before-seen computer generated images, produced by the brand new multi-million-dollar digital editing equipment bought for Saturday Night Live that they were allowed free access to.
The mother in the video really is Lauper’s mother, while the “father” is wrestler “Captain” Lou Albano, with whom she would collaborate on a number of occasions throughout her career.