Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper ( LAW-pər; born June 22, 1953) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Lauper is known for her distinctive image, which features eccentric clothing and a variety of hair colors. She is also known for her powerful four-octave vocal range. Lauper has been dubbed the "Queen of Quirky Pop." She has sold over 50 million records worldwide. She has also been celebrated for her humanitarian work, particularly as an advocate for LGBTQ rights in the United States.
Lauper's debut album, She's So Unusual (1983), was the first debut album by a female artist to achieve four top-five hits on the Billboard Hot 100—"Girls Just Want to Have Fun," "Time After Time," "She Bop," and "All Through the Night"—and earned Best New Artist at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards in 1985. The music video for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" won Best Female Video at the inaugural 1984 MTV Video Music Awards and has been hailed by MTV, VH1 and Rolling Stone as one of the greatest videos of the era. Lauper's second album, True Colors (1986), achieved two more top-five hits; the title track and "Change of Heart." Lauper's chart success continued with the singles "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" (1985), "I Drove All Night" (1989) and into the 2000s with multiple number-one hits on the Hot Dance Club Play charts, "Same Ol' Story," and "Into the Nightlife" (2008).
Since 1983, Lauper has released twelve studio albums and participated in many other projects. In 2010, Memphis Blues became Billboard's most successful blues album of the year, remaining at number one on the Billboard Blues Albums chart for 13 consecutive weeks. In 2013, Lauper won the Tony Award for Best Original Score for composing the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, making her the first woman to win the category by herself. The musical was awarded five other Tonys, including Best Musical. In 2014, Lauper was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for the cast recording. In 2016, the West End production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical.
Lauper's accolades include two Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Tony Award, three MTV Video Music Awards, four Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is one of the few singers to win three of the four major American entertainment awards (EGOT). In 2015, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Lauper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November 2025. She's So Unusual ranked 494th among Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. VH1 named "Time After Time" one of the best songs of the preceding 25 years, and named Lauper the 58th-greatest woman in rock and roll.
