The equation has turned on CBS’s latest “Grammy Salute” specials: they were traditionally all-star salutes where the legendary artist who Flated makes a como appearance at the end (provided they live). But with a new soil, wind & fire tribute under that banner and now a Cyndi Lauper Special, we get full concerts from these artists, with a selection of guest duet partners. It’s all the better, for anyone who missed Cyndi Lauper’s latest farewell tour – or someone who didn’t – because she gives more than enough Wattage to run two hours on her own in Sunday night’s “A Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper: Live from the Hollywood Bowl.” But when Joni MitchellThe SZA and Cher Turns up, they are nothing to sneeze.
“She is so unusual,” promised her first solo album us in 1983. This special-Exec-produced by Grammy’s veteran Ken honestRecording by Academy Manager Harvey Mason Jr. And Lauper – is also so unusual. The risk is in how close it will be a straight transcription of the show she toured around the country this year, giving or taking some superstars and niche guests. There are exactly two talking heads that appear during the duration of the time slot: short video lots from Brandi Carlle and Billie Eilish who barely take the space in a minute between them. The rest of it is unexpurred Cyndi, on stage and not in conversation – the decision that is possibly affected by the fact that the fans already got a large amount of it in her 2023 Paramount+ documentary “Let the Canary Sing.” This time with the Lauper, the show has to continue, and really just the show, filmed over two nights at the end of August when her goodbye tour was wrapped on the Hollywood Bowl.
When it comes to “features”, she is generally very well matched, divisive and otherwise. Country Powerhouse (and recently Amount Cover subject) Mickey Guyton proves an ideal harmonious mixture for Lauper early, about what might be one of the less familiar numbers at night, “Who lets in the rain.” In a memorably long and glittering black coat, John Legend goes out with her on the ridge that separates the bowl’s pool seat from its other boxes for a near-and-person “time and time again”; He gives a more even equivalent to her always a little rougher feeling. Angélique Kidjo and Trombone Shorty add a little more regional exotic touch to the already left-by-pop center New Orleans Bop, “IKO IKO.”
Mr. Shorty returns to sit in with Lauper and Mitchell on the beloved “Carey of the latter legend.” (That’s the one number in which the guest is doing her own number, rather than joining the headliner for one of hers, but in the case of mitchell, the mountain must come to mohammed. And lauper is hardly skipping the chance to use tribute special to pay tribute special to. Wolf’s-head-can-tapping comeback queen.) The Presence of Sza Adds Plenty of Extra Sparkle on the show’s penultimate duet, “True Colors.” SZA clearly plays well with others, and assesses from her Kendrick Lamar Collab is one of the biggest hits of the year, and she performs just as well to bent something a little closer to the middle of the show-biz road. And there could be no better casting for “girls just want fun” than Cher, who even got a designer polka-dot pants suit to match Lauper’s, and gets the star’s signature song to sound like it belongs in her catalog as well.
The only collaboration that does not really pay off for these two hours is with Jake Wesley Rogers, who gives one of Lauper’s biggest songs, “Money Changes Everything”, an extended coda that is just very … rusty. On the other hand, although it is not a musical highlight, you may appreciate that the duet with Rogers ends in a simulated wrestling match, probably in tribute to Lauper’s friendship in an early career with the late Captain Lou Albano (who gets a scream much earlier in the broadcast). Wresslin ‘did not change everything for Lauper, but it was one of the early signs that this was an artist who would do it in his own way, whether it means compounds with fleshy and fleshy types or her long -lasting LGBTQ+ Allyship.
Did we say a few back that this special was not about conversation? Let’s put a significant asterisk on it, came to think about it, because we just meant it had a (welcome, for us) lack of interview movies. But you will Hear her talk. Lauper devoted many of his concerts every night this year to stories, which made it quite close to her version of a single-woman show, even though she had a full band that kicked back behind her while regulating her audience with stories about her upbringing, career performance and setbacks and thoughts on feminism. This “Grammy Salute” offers a surprising amount of the long song introductions, seemingly made intact (because how she tells them, there would be few ways to cut them). All that chat can test some patience for some, but these fairer-weather friends can go and make dishes and come back at 10:50 to hear “girls just want fun”, while fans who appreciate the full measure of her boiling/contemplative persons can settle for the luxury ride.
Among her solo numbers for the night, how serious her themes will be, nothing will come before the 42 years of pleasure and self-joy that “she bop” has given. (When the cameras cut to a pair of young girls in the middle of the audience’s reaction shot, you wonder what PMRC would do by young people exposed to this dirt, if they had only survived.) On the other hand, “The Goonies’ is good enough” in no way a necessary part of her set, even if it is fun to get it anyway. . Was Getting Unwanted Advice From Men In Gold Chains: “I Found Myself, Instead of the People That Made Me Famous, Sitting with People That I Ran Away From Home to Get Away from.” She examines her first professional failures after the star and says “I could not let you forget that you didn’t forget that you didn’t you to forget that you didn’t like to you forgot that you could not let you forget that you could not let you forget that you could not let you forgot.
As always, Lauper sounds like a tough queen cake, although she may be accused of being a snowflake, by non-fans who happen to the special and hear her advocating what we can still consider liberal ideals. Says Carlle, in her video: “Thanks for everything you have done for all people, especially women, and that thanks will never be enough thanks to cover what you have done for Queers.” Lauper does not explain so much himself, in addition to noting that her costume designer encouraged her to add more glamor to homosexuals. But at the end of “true colors”, when she and Sza let a gigantic pride flag be blown up over them by invisible fans … Yes, it may not be enough to scrape incoming network -regulating approvals, but there is still some doubt that it will not be a welcome vision throughout America right now, and that she is especially true in that.
Other undertones will be unspoken but will be obvious to the fans, such as “Sally’s Pigeons”, with an introduction Lauper does mostly about her neighbors … but as her followers will know is about a childhood friend who died of a rear abortion. (The “21 years” in the original recorded lyric has now been changed to “52 years,” to Establish that the song still take the year before roe v. How Lauper Continues to Be A Poster Girl for their Revolutions Even As She Holds Court As Your Basic Eager-Entertain Veteran Pop Star.
One of the most narrative stories that Lauper offers is about the tradition of seamstress ran strongly in her Italian immigrant family, and how she thought, “if they could do it with fabric” – to sew together different elements, that is, “maybe I could do it with music … I was in deconstruction before it was on the way.” But as much as she did it with a marriage with music styles, she actually did it with fabric too, even though she was not the one who manned the sewing machines. The music may have ended up pretty Danged mainstream, but there is still an interesting avant-something quality for her changed suit during the night. . Fashion can be among the smallest of the things that most people who look at “a Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper” will care deeply, but in this case it makes the woman … or at least make the woman’s lifelong career curiosity symbolically great.
