Cyndi Lauper

Cynthia Ann Stephanie "Cyndi" Lauper is an American pop singer and songwriter who, in the 1980s, achieved worldwide success significant enough to rival Madonna for a few years.

Her debut solo album, "She's So Unusual" (1983), destined to remain her masterpiece, was the first debut album by a woman to place 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 it earned Lauper the award for Best New Artist at the 27th Grammy Awards in 1985. Her success continued with the soundtrack to "The Goonies" and her second album "True Colors" (1986), which included the number-one single "True Colors" and "Change of Heart", which reached number 3.

Since 1989, Lauper has released nine studio albums and taken part in many other projects. In 2010, "Memphis Blues" became Billboard's best-selling blues album of the year, staying 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", becoming the first woman to win the category solo. The musical received five other Tonys, including the Tony Award for Best New Musical. In 2014, Lauper also won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for the cast recording. In 2016, the West End production won Best New Musical at the Olivier Awards.

An actress and LGBT rights activist as well as a singer, Cyndi Lauper has established herself as an icon of global pop culture, selling over 50 million albums and 20 million singles. She has won awards at the Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, the New York Outer Critics Circle, the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), the Billboard Awards and the American Music Awards (AMAs). Inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Cyndi Lauper is among the few performers to have won three of the four major American entertainment awards (EGOT).