🎧 “She Bop” & Cyndi Lauper: How one neon-haired "Misfit" shook up 1984 with a Beat, a Wink, and a Song about Masturbation.

The Twelve Inch 169 : She Bop (Cindy Lauper)

In the summer of 1984, a fizzy synth-pop banger burst out of American radios with a hook that practically dared you not to dance. But listen a little closer, and “She Bop” was doing more than filling the floor, it was flipping a very public middle finger to the moral panic brewing in Washington, which made it end up on a government watchlist.

But how did we get there? Who was Cyndi Lauper before she shocked Reagan’s America? And what did a brash New Yorker and a Boston electro-funk wizard like Arthur Baker have in common?

Let’s “Bop In” and start at the beginning.