“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper is one of the most iconic songs of the ‘80s. Its message of female empowerment has kept it relevant for five decades. The song tells a simple story about a young woman trying to convince her parents to let her have a good time.
Released in late 1983, the song was accompanied by a colorful music video featuring Lauper in thrift store attire: a prom dress, cheap sunglasses, and plenty of bangles. The video also featured wrestling legend “Captain” Lou Albano as Lauper’s father. After the video became a smash, their unlikely friendship would help merge the rock and wrestling worlds.
A different beginning
An overlooked fact about the ubiquitous song is that it originally had a completely different meaning. It was originally written by Robert Hazard, a punk musician, in 1979. Hazard’s version of the song is sung from a male perspective, and his idea of fun appears to be casual sex, as evident in the second verse:
Come home with the morning light
My mother says, “My boy, you’ve got to start living right”
Don’t worry, mother dear, you’re still number one
Girls just wanna have fun
These girls just wanna have fun
“It was originally about how fortunate he was ’cause he was a guy around these girls that wanted to have ‘fun’—with him—down there, which we do not speak lest we go blind,” Lauper said, according to Song Facts.
A perspective shift
Lauper’s producer, Rick Chertoff, was friends with Hazard and suggested the song for Lauper’s debut album. Lauper reworked some of the lyrics to reflect the change in gender with Hazard. “I changed all the lyrics over the phone with her. Originally, it was from the guy’s point of view,” Hazard told The Morning Call in 1986. “We had to make a lot of gender changes. She took the first verse and second verse and switched them. Why, I have no idea. Melodically, it’s exactly the same.”
The song also got a completely new arrangement, created by Chertoff, who took it from a bare-bones punk song to a synth-infused pop track that took some inspiration from “Come on Eileen,” Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ 1982 smash.
“I turned down the tempo knob on the drum machine, programmed in the same kick drum pattern as ‘Come on Eileen,’ clicked on my guitar, and played that guitar riff,” guitarist Eric Bazilian said according to Song Facts. “She started singing, and that was it.”
The song would go on to hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America and was named number 32 on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of the 1980s. She later remade the song in 1994 as “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)” with a reggae feel. The song has been covered by over 100 artists, including Miley Cyrus.
Hazard would go on to record six albums over his career, his last coming in 2007. He later said that the $1 million-plus in royalties from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” allowed him to buy a lake house in New Jersey and a horse farm. Hazard passed away on August 5, 2008, of pancreatic cancer, just shy of his 60th birthday.
