“I hear the clock tick and think of you”: “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper

When my husband and I chose this 80’s tune as “our song” I wondered if we’d chosen something too temporary, a flash-in-the-pan song by an artist who would be relegated to a side note to the big hair and shoulder pads decade that was the 80’s. (Flock of Seagulls anyone?)

Thirty years later, it’s #20 on Top 100 Love Songs. Looks like we did OK. 

Almost all of Lauper’s catalog (over a dozen albums) is available from Freegal.
I had always thought of Cyndi Lauper as a kind of lovable airhead, multicolor hair and raggedy clothes and all. But after reading about her life in Contemporary Musicians, I see why she was inspired to pen a song about persistence—in love, as well as everything else

Here are some of the high and low notes of her career:

·         A child of a single mom who worked as a waitress, Lauper was always singing as an escape

·         Expelled from several Catholic schools

·         Sang on street corners in Greenwich Village

·         Joined a disco group and strained her vocal chords so severely that doctors told her she couldn’t sing again

·         Work with an opera singer to restore her voice

·         Cut an album with her band, Blue Angels.  It didn’t do well, and she declared bankruptcy

·         Started singing at a Japanese bar

·         Met her fiancée and manager who tirelessly promoted her until she was able to release She’s So Unusual which went to the top of the charts

Since then, she’s seen records flop, ended one relationship and started another, and won an Emmy for acting. She’s been nominated for a Grammy for Memphis Blues and appeared on reality shows.

Not content to sink into the shadows of the 80’s, she keeps coming back. Time after time.