’Let the Canary Sing’

Singer-songwriter, icon, tireless advocate – Cyndi Lauper’s position in history is firmly cemented. But it wasn’t always this way.

Just one step away from the coveted EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony – only the Oscar remains to be won), Lauper hit the big time with the 1983 single Girls Just Want to Have Fun and album She’s So Unusual. By then, she had been in the industry struggling for more than a decade. And the documentary Let the Canary Sing provides a context to the struggles she faced both at home and within the male-dominated music business. Four successive top five songs from a debut album (the first female recording artist in history) still didn’t make it easy for her.

Tireless in the advocacy of her beliefs (feminism, gay rights and homelessness in particular) along with diverse musical tastes and influences, Let the Canary Sing overall accentuates the positive. A number of negatives in her early life are excluded (rape, hospitalisation for malnutrition, dropped by her record label) as Lauper looks not to (all) True Colours but in turning back time, looks to the many albums, Tony and Olivier Best New Musical Awards for Kinky Boots and personal journeys instead.

Nostalgic, insightful, Alison Ellwood’s documentary may not provide a great deal of new material, but it will undoubtedly please her legion of millions of fans.

Rating: 72%

Director: Alison Ellwood (Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place, TV’s How to Change Your Mind)

’The Greatest Night in Pop’

The single night recording of We Are the World, a charity single for African famine relief, and the collaborating personalities involved was history in the making.

With the UK charity single release in December 1984 of Do They Know It’s Christmas?, the initiative by Bob Geldof and Band Aid, musician and activist Harry Belafonte looked to an American response. With music manager, producer and consultant Ken Kragen, Belafonte approached Lionel Richie – and from there are on in, the idea snowballed. And quickly. Action was needed immediately. The ceremony for the American Music Awards on 28 January 1985 was identified – the industry would be descending on LA. That gave Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson mere weeks to write the song, artists to be contacted and confirmed, practical arrangements made and Quincy Jones to produce.

As The Greatest Night in Pop shows, it was tight. Extended commentary from Richie himself on the whole process along with insights from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Dionne Warwick, Huey Lewis, Sheila E., Smokey Robinson as well as technicians and cameramen involved support the gist of Bao Nguyen’s documentary – the footage of the A&M recording session on that one January 1985 night/morning.

With Richie as our tour guide, The Greatest Night in Pop is a blast – the chaos of 40+ artists, their commitment, the vocal control of Michael Jackson, the wizardry of Stevie Wonder, the discomfort of Bob Dylan, the calm of Quincy Jones.

Rating: 74%

Director: Bao Nguyen (Live From New York!, Be Water)

‘Kinky Boots’

It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it carries an important sociopolitical message – but, inversely,  Cyndi Lauper’s Kinky Boots confirms that the musical is, personally, my least favourite of the stage genre.

The story is based on true events – Charlie Price inherits his family’s Northampton shoe-making business and, in attempting to avoid bankruptcy, makes an unlikely alliance in the making of ‘shoes for women worn by men.’

As drag queen Lola, Callum Francis (understudy in the original West End production) is captivating and likely to give the Broadway and West End stars a run for their money. The showstopping Not My Father’s Son and Hold Me in Your Heart are standouts, with Lola belting them out like the best of them. But sadly, the rest of the energetic Australian cast struggle with the material. They certainly try hard and their enthusiasm is undeniable. But it’s all just a little too try hard.

Enjoyable at the time, listening to the soundtrack a few days later left me, with a couple of exceptions, unmoved – a telltale sign!