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TWELVE DEADLY CYNS...AND THEN SOME is a greatest-hits record with three new tracks. Personnel includes: Cyndi Lauper (vocals, dulcimer, recorder); Rob Hyman (vocals, melodica, keyboards, synthesizer); Eric Bazilian (acoustic & electric guitars, mandolin, violin, melodica, saxophone, bass, background vocals); William Wittman, John McCurry, Robert Holmes, Felicia Collins, Rob Bailey (guitar); Charlie Giordano (accordion, keyboards); Jeff Bova (keyboards, synthesizer); Joey Moskowitz (keyboards, programming); Will Lee, Bakithi Kumalo (bass); Anton Fig, Steve Ferrone (drums); Ellie Greenwich, Krystal Davis, Dianne Wilson (background vocals); Nile Rodgers, Jules Shear, The Bangles, Paul Shaffer, Adrian Belew. Producers include: Cyndi Lauper, William Wittman, Rick Chertoff, Lennie Petze, Junior Vasquez. Engineers include: William Wittman, Brian McGee, Eric Thorngren. Think of her as a novelty if you want--with her squeaky-voiced, New Yawk accent, her flame-colored hair and her pals in the World Wrestling Federation--but realize that she was one of the most distinguished pop singers of her time. Between 1983 and 1986 Cyndi Lauper had seven top-10 singles and she had range. There were cheeky anthems to girldom ("Girls Just Want To Have Fun," "She Bop"), there were timeless ballads ("Time After Time" and "True Colors," her two well-deserved number ones), and there was real rock jangle ("Money Changes Everything"). That New Yawk soprano managed to carry both impudence and compassion, and found in some songs what even the songwriters could not. Lauper's "All Through The Night" is a grand pop melody that Jules Shear's original version barely suggested, and her take on "Money Changes Everything" is a power-pop epic with a wave of synthesizer and electric guitar that drowns the original by the Brains. TWELVE DEADLY CYNS, which features eleven hits and album tracks, a soul-reggae remake of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," and two other new songs, continues the story post-1986 and finds much of the distinction gone but the pop sensibility still strong. 1989's "I Drove All Night" is a neat Roy Orbison homage; "Sally's Pigeons," a 1993 writing collaboration with Mary-Chapin Carpenter, is an unlikely flirtation with singer-songwriter-dom; and the previously unreleased "I'm Gonna Be Strong" is a dramatic stab at an old Gene Pitney ballad. They're not so much pop singles as they are musings of an orange-haired cabaret singer.
