Cyndi Lauper Album: “Time After Time: The Best of Cyndi Lauper”

This may not be as great a greatest hits CD as "Twelve Deadly Cyns" but this is worth purchasing. "Girls Just Want To Have Fun", "She Bop", and "Change Of Heart" are all classics. "Time After Time", "All Through The Night" and "I Drove All Night" show what a beautiful singer she can be. "Maybe He'll Know" is a great track that is included here. It features Billy Joel on background vocals. The best reason to get this is for the extremely hard to find "The Goonies R Good ERnough" which is no longer available here and was left off "Twelve Deadly Cyns". It is a great classic that you must have if you are a Cyndi fan.

Cyndi Lauper was a huge pop force in the 80's and had a nice amount of hits and had some great music videos to go along with them which really helped to make her a star. It's a shame this is an import cuz it's actually better than "12 Deadly Cyns." This album has all of Cyndi's big hits including her two #1 singles "Time After Time" and "True Colors" *both fabulous ballads.* It also has other top 10 singles such as "All Through the Night" *one of my faves* "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" *who can forget this one?* "Change of Heart," "I Drove All Night," "She Bop," *hehe* and the fantastic piece of pop ear candy "The Goonies R Good Enough" which was unfairly left off of "12 Deadly Cyns". Sure, the song is annoying to some but I will forever connect it to my childhood and the awesome movie that she recorded it for. I highly recommend this. Cyndi Lauper is a great and unerrated artist. She helped make the 80's what it was. Love her or hate her for it.

After one unsuccessful album, Cyndi recorded three albums in the eighties (She's so unusual, True colors, A night to remember) that gave her plenty of success and it is from these three albums that this compilation is mainly assembled. Some of her later albums, though less successful, are well worth hearing but it is the eighties that most people associate with Cyndi.

So, this compilation includes all of Cyndi's important hits of the eighties including Girls just want to have fun, Time after time (later covered by Eva Cassady among others), She bop, All through the night, True colors, Change of heart (with the Bangles on backing vocals), What's going on (a cover of a Marvin Gaye classic) and I drove all night (which also became a top ten UK hit for Roy Orbison).

If you just want one collection of Cyndi's music, this has all the essential eighties tracks.

I've probably posted this story before in a review of one of Cyndi Lauper's albums, so I won't belabor it here. But the thing that convinced me that Cyndi was a good as I had been hearing (and reading) back in 1984 was not either of the first two hit singles played constantly on the radio (good as "Girls Just Wanna..." and "Time After Time" were). I had no idea what a commanding singer she could be until I walked into a record store where they were playing "Money Changes Everything" on the stereo. It was one of thos "aha" moments you hear about. So that's what they were talking about. I stood riveted as she wailed out those final beautifully angry notes. As scorching a vocal eruption as anything Janis had ever put to record.

Ever since I've been fan, whether it was the hip thing to be or not. When others were writing her off as a cute novelty act, I was championing Cyndi Lauper as a great singer. My diva pantheon is select and a bit quirky, but for me Cyndi was right up there with Janis, Grace, Judy Henske, Nico, Laura Nyro and Tracy Nelson (no, NOT the actress, silly).

But it was that one song that made a believer out of me, so imagine my disappointment when this German "best of" import left it out. I mean, I won't argue with too many of the songs that did make it onto this disc, and have to wonder if maybe it's not just a kind of European thing. It's hard to imagine "Money..." being left off of ANY American compilation (so far it has not, to my knowledge). But it did not make it onto this Deutsche disc nor its French equivalent (LES INDISPENSIBLES).

Unlike the American (and British) 12 DEADLY CYNS, this compilation is a little less heavily weighted toward SHE'S SO UNUSUAL. Well, actually both had five tracks from the first solo album, but this European product at least gives the sophomore effort TRUE COLORS equal representation with five tracks from that one. The oft maligned and always underrated NIGHT TO REMEMBER is at least represented by two songs, and it's nice to see that aside from "I Drove All Night" (still the best version for my money) the brooding, very grown-up sound that album introduced is captured by one of its better ballads, "I Don't Want To Be Your Friend," on which Cyndi surprised many by sounding uncannily like Joan Armatrading.

The more recent American release THE ESSENTIAL CYNDI LAUPER also includes the much in demand "Goonies R Good Enough," so its inclusion here may no longer be reason enough for fans to shell out for this import. However, TIME AFTER TIME does offer another much sought after rarity, the European single "The World Is Stone." This gorgeously sombre composition has also finally appeared on an American CD--oddly a budgetline Christmas CD entitled "Feels Like Christmas," which is certainly inexpensive, but the Gallic gloom seems totally out of place on a holiday CD. It's like mixing absinthe in the egg nog.

And here it's all of a piece with such other bits of tristesse as "True Colors" and "Time After Time." It hangs together beautifully. Whoever determined the sequence of the songs did a masterful job by wisely throwing chronology out the window (pretty much) and coming up with a record that flows pretty much seamlessly from beginning to end.

But then it works pretty well on random select too. A testament ot Cyndi's talent for sure. And the entire CD is a testament to her universal appeal, I'd say. Too bad she lacks the recognition in this country that the Europeans and Japanese have accorded her since the beginning

Ok! I'm not that fair because I really like her, that's why I'm only giving this album a 4 over 5. But I personally think it's great. I'd almost say it's a must have... but, as I said, I'm not totaly impartial :)