Girls Just Want To Have Fun singer Cyndi Lauper said she “cried” after seeing the title of her hit song had been modified and turned into a feminist slogan.
The New York-born music star, 71, who is known for her activism as well as her songs, was asked what it has meant to see banners at women’s marches saying “Girls just want to have fundamental rights”.
“When I saw that, I cried a little, because I used to get in a lot of trouble for talking about women’s rights,” she told Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
“When I saw that, I called up my friends that I started the True Colours Fund with, and I said, ‘Let’s start the Girls Just Want To Have Fundamental Rights Fund, come on’, which helps women’s health, safe and legal abortion, prenatal care, postnatal care, cancer screenings and everything having to do with women’s health and promotion of women.
“So we do that and we raise money and fund organisations all over the world.”
Lauper co-founded True Colours United (formerly True Colours Fund), an organisation focusing on youth homelessness and the LGBT+ community, in 2008.
She announced her donor-advised fund, formed to financially support women’s issues, in 2022, following protests in support of abortion rights after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade.
The protests took place five years on from the global Women’s March that was organised after the first inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
She added: “Well, they (things) change and they don’t.
“The fact that Taylor Swift had to justify herself, I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ I’m freaking so proud of that young woman. What a good example.
“I’m happy watching all these young women, and I know that there’ll always be struggles, but you just always got to take a step back, and there’s always going to be gatekeepers, and just figure out how to get around them.
“Find like-minded people doing similar things that you aspire to do, and know that there are still artist collectives that you could join, and achieve what it is you want.”
On the idea of legacy, she added: “I was told one time by a very prominent, very important male figure of the industry, that said that we were making disposable music.
“And I took issue with that because I did not make disposable music, and I don’t do that.”
She added: “Just do the best you can, and don’t make disposable music, or make music that makes people happy. Find some songs that help people, and you can leave that behind and do some great work.”
Lauper, who performed at Glastonbury Festival last year, is known for hits including Time After Time, Money Changes Everything and True Colours.
While performing Girls Just Want To Have Fun, during her Pyramid Stage set, she referred to feminist marches and said she went out and saw the signs about girls wanting “fundamental rights”.
She has won two Grammy Awards, one for best new artist in 1985, and the other for best musical theatre album for Broadway and West End musical Kinky Boots, for which she wrote the music in the 2010s.
Lauper’s Desert Island Discs airs on Sunday at 10am on BBC Radio 4 and is available on BBC Sounds.
