Cyndi Lauper at the concert in Berlin’s Uber Arena: One fun “with everything”, please!

Sure, how else should this evening in Berlin end? Of course, Cyndi Lauper performs this one song on the home stretch. Her absolute mega hit: "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". Synth-pop with a punk attitude. Cherry-red polka dots, inspired by Yayoi Kusama, tumble across the white screen in the background. The live band grooves on jagged platforms. And Lauper sings her and our hearts out. With a slightly scratched but no less impressive vocal power. Because Lauper knows that this song from 1983, her first single, can still mean the world.

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour” is the name of the concert tour that has now brought Cyndi Lauper to Friedrichshain , to the Uber Arena on this eight-degree Tuesday evening, February 25, 2025. A good 12,000 people (mostly over 50) have come to experience Lauper up close. It is to be Lauper’s last big tour forever. It started in October 2024 in Montreal, Canada. It will end on April 25 in Japan, in Tokyo, where Lauper will play three times. 45 shows, all in all. Lauper’s first pure arena tour since 1986. A farewell to someone who once completely redefined what female rock'n'roll can sound like – and who inspired pop stars well into this millennium, including Lady Gaga and Kim Petras .

Or the Berlin-based Canadian and queer pop punker Peaches, who also stands on the Berlin stage (wearing an animal wig) and sings along when Lauper treats us to the "Girls" song as the finale. A song that was once written in 1979 by a man, a rocker: Robert Hazard. Lauper thought the song was cool at the time, but the lyrics were slightly misogynistic. So she changed them. Until it became a feminist empowerment anthem, long before the word empowerment came into fashion.

Cyndi Lauper in Berlin: A New Wave Ode to Female Masturbation

When Cynthia Ann Stephanie "Cyndi" Lauper, born in Queens in 1953, grew up in New York as the daughter of a mother of Sicilian descent and a father with a Swiss-German immigrant background (note the family name: Lauper), it was by no means a given that a girl would demand such self-determination. Because this fun is nothing less. It is about much more than amusement and pleasure. It is about the freedom to do and not do what you want. In the song, Lauper demands this directly from both parents (who symbolically serve as the patronizing outside world) - three years before Madonna would belt out "Papa Don't Preach" across the dance floors in 1986.

The evening in Berlin started with a different song on the piano lacquer black stage, on which the colorful construction paper background was reflected almost like a Rubik's cube: After Blondie's guitar hit "One Way Or Another" had been played from the tape at around 9:10 p.m., Lauper (greenish-gray wig, silvery glittery jacket with asymmetrical zipper and pointed shoulders) began her live set with "She Bop." A new wave ode to female masturbation in the face of a sleazy gay porn "Blueboy" magazine. In 1984, the single was a scandal. Which radio station wanted to play such porn songs in the prudish USA, which were also bursting with female self-confidence?

Cyndi Lauper in the Uber Arena: Cellphone light ballads like “Time After Time”

Many didn't. But Lauper didn't need the radio. MTV saved her. It was the first heyday of music television. And while the videos "killed" many a radio star, for Lauper, especially with their garish styling, they were the right path: her debut album "She's So Unusual" alone brought her four (!!!!) top 5 hits in the USA. No female artist has ever achieved that before. But the truth is that Lauper was never able to repeat the commercial success of her debut. No matter. She became a pop icon. And an activist: especially for women's and queer rights. Incidentally, quite a few women (and men!) in the Berlin Arena audience are wearing Lauper fan T-shirts and pink-violet Lauper fan wigs, the proceeds of which go to Lauper's women's aid fund.

What else happened at what was probably Lauper's last big show in Berlin? A blues rock and salsa class feeling due to excessive percussion. Guitar eruptions and a Lauper-style recorder solo. Of course it was also nostalgic (not just because of the many anecdotes), especially during the Prince cover "When You Were Mine" and the soft, cell phone flashlight-waving ballads like "True Colors" and "Time After Time". Lauper remembered her very first appearance in Germany in 1980, back then with her short-lived power rock pop band called Blue Angel as support for Joe Jackson ("Is She Really Going Out With Him?"). It's crazy, that was a long time ago! Lauper tells us that she used to think that life had to stay exactly the same forever if it was ever good. Now she knows: it's all just chapters. "And each of us binds our own book out of our chapters."

Lauper also points out another important lesson of her life: gays (who are one of her core target groups) love glamour. In a particularly funny scene, Lauper disappears backstage; we watch her via stage camera (live?) on the screen, while three make-up artists paint and powder her face in a slightly overambitious manner. "I wanted to say goodbye with a grand gesture," says Lauper. "I even tried to dress up for you." In moments like these, you just want to give this woman a big hug - and thank her for all the fun she has given us with her songs for decades. We may never see her live again. But her music is now playing on the radio with all the 80s hits, time after time . The world is not all bad.