ONE OF A KIND

She survived a violent stepfather and being raped by a bandmate as well as rampant showbiz sexism. Now as singer Cyndi Lauper heads off on her farewell tour aged 71, she just wants to have fun

- HADLEY FREEMAN

THE DIFFERENCE between doing a world tour when you're 31 and when you're 71, says Cyndi Lauper, is five hours a day. Back when she was in her thirties her voice could effortlessly scale four octaves and blow the socks off people in the back row.

"I was a killer singer. Drop a dime and I would sing," she says in her girlish voice.

But now in her seventies and midway through her global farewell tour, she has to spend five hours every day doing vocal and physical exercises, "just so that I can go out and sing like a fire-breathing dragon".

Cyndi has spent her whole life fighting to get her fiery voice out. Back in the early days music executives wanted to pitch her as the next Debbie Harry or any other already famous female singer, but she said, "You already got one of those!

I'm Cyndi Lauper ['Laow-puh']."' When someone suggested she sing a song from 1979 called Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which was written from a male perspective about how women are obsessed with sex, she rewrote it as a joyful feminist anthem.

And when a member of her band raped her in the early 1980s, she refused to give them the satisfaction of quitting.

"They wanted the power my voice had. They weren't going to get it," she says fiercely.

They didn't. Over the course of her 40-year career she has used her voice to sell more than 50 million records, and she has been garlanded with two Grammys and a Tony, the latter for her score for the musical Kinky Boots.

Cyndi and I are meeting upstairs in a Russian restaurant in New York City, not far from her apartment on the Upper West Side.

It's a conservative neighbourhood where I imagine Cyndi - with her pink hair, kabuki pale face and quirky fashion choices stands out: "No, I blend! I just put on a hat and don't open my mouth," she replies with a cackle.