Cyndi Lauper’s recent screw-up singing the national anthem brought back memories of when Cyndi Lauper was actually popular. Everything was neon--not the most flattering color palette on anyone and everyone used hairspray. The make-up was equally as flattering; I’m not necessarily proud of my personal choice of bright green eye-liner coupled with purple eyeshadow applied in a bizarre geometric pattern.

And the girls just wanted to have to fun. The poppy music of the 1980’s kind of fit the saccharine-era of the times and of the suburbs. It was if everyone I knew was trapped inside some bizarre Douglas Coupland novel making fun of Generation X and the people who fit the M-TV Generation demographic. I hated the suburbs, but had nothing else to compare them with. (My parents didn’t let me get out to the big city all that much.)

In the times when Cyndi Lauper was bursting on the scene, M-TV was debuting music videos on a daily basis. I went to school with people who lived and died for Duran Duran music premieres--we were in jr. high and high school, so there wasn’t much else to do.

The biggest difference between the M-TV of today and yesterday, is of course, that music videos are seen much more on You-Tube than M-TV.

As good as Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was at the time, “Time after Time” which came out was even better. (Of course, in my opinion, Cyndi Lauper couldn’t hold a candle to the actual Madonna, even way back when.) Wham! was on the scene, too, but neither George Michael or Andrew Ridgely seem to have survived beyond the 1980’s. The only time I hear about George Michael at all is when he is interviewed about his sex life, which by all accounts seem to be highly active.

The cooler kids listened to Joy Division and Depeche Mode, both of whom made it to suburbia. The big rap for the burbs wasn’t really all that hardcore at the time, at least where I was. We listened to Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys more than any bands actually responsible for sparking either the hip-hop or rap musical movements. (There may have been some at my school who were listening to different bands back then, but I wasn’t aware of it.)