The title of Alison Ellwood’s new documentary Let The Canary Sing refers to a judge’s pithy comment when giving his judgment on a court case that saw Cyndi Lauper fight for her right to sing. She was vindicated after being chased by a former manager hoping to garnish some of her astonishing earnings after she hit it big as a solo pop star with her debut album, She’s So Unusual. The story is just one of many battles and obstacles the embattled songbird had to deal with on her journey.
Both the documentary film Let the Canary Sing and the accompanying soundtrack album reviewed here tell Lauper’s story in a fairly straightforward and largely chronological fashion. Still, her path has been anything but a straight line. As Lauper says, “My journey was painful because my career just didn’t go like my peers. My career was up and down, up and down, up and down.” Like the film, this album traces that unusual and difficult trajectory.
There have been several anthologies and compilations of Lauper's work, starting with the excellent Twelve Deadly Cyns… And Then Some (1994), followed by several attempts to encapsulate her odd career. She’s So Unusual is a near-perfect debut and is probably the most impactful entry in her varied discography, but the soundtrack to Let The Canary Sing is a significant mark above the other “greatest hits” albums because it doesn’t just collect Lauper’s biggest chart successes, but also tells her story in the best way possible: through her fantastic music.
A prevailing narrative that has followed Lauper for the past 10-15 years or so is that she’s one of the most underrated artists of her time. The film goes into the creative process of three of Lauper’s biggest and most enduring hits: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Time After Time,” and “True Colors.” Interestingly, the last song, her second number-one hit, was written by ’80s pop songwriting heavyweights Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, though Lauper’s warm and definitive interpretation of the song’s lyrics has blurred the borders of authorship. 
The film also does a fascinating deep dive into the origins and genesis of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” which is both career-defining for Lauper and also a fine, if slight, New Wave pop song written by Robert Hazard. When the song was suggested to Lauper, she balked, unhappy with the song’s male point of view. Instead, she reworked some of the lyrics, changing the tune into an anthem of female empowerment. The song’s enduring popularity would reappear when protestors co-opted its message during the Women's March, declaring that “Girls just want to have FUN-damental rights.”
And it’s Lauper's activist leanings make for some of the most moving moments in Let The Canary Sing. When the film turns to “True Colors,” Lauper recounts recording the tune at the time she was watching her best friend die of AIDS. Like many survivors of the AIDS crisis, Lauper seems somewhat traumatized by her memories (her sister quickly dissolves into tears when talking about that time). “What I saw,” she said of the early days of AIDS, “was so bad and so unjust.”
Her activism around women’s rights and choice both fueled and was fueled by “Sally’s Pigeons,” a single from her 1993 album Hat Full Of Stars. Arriving years removed from her salad days, “Sally’s Pigeons,” written with Mary Chapin Carpenter, was a sad story of a childhood friend who died from a botched abortion. Lauper re-recorded the song for the film in time for renewed activism as states throughout the US have enacted near-total bans on abortion.
The film does a lot of work to highlight Lauper as a toiler (her sister calls her a “technician”). Though not a famed instrumentalist, the background work that she and her co-writers do on classic tunes like “Time After Time” is impressive. As Lauper describes the writing process—particularly zeroing in on the song's ticking cadence resulting from Rob Hyman’s ticking watch—we see the singer light up: she’s in her element describing the genesis of this beloved tune.
Along with the above familiar and indelible hits, this 22-song collection includes a generous helping of less widely known but equally worthy tunes from across Lauper’s remarkable career, with new edits of several tracks created specifically for this release, along with the re-recorded version of “Sally’s Pigeons.”
While promoting Let The Canary Sing, Lauper also announced that she’s going on one final tour. Turning 70, she still feels physically up to the challenge of touring, but the uncertainty of the future has prompted her to do one last concert hurrah while she knows she can. The career-spanning Let The Canary Sing is a fitting tribute to the end of an important chapter of her career as Cyndi Lauper looks forward to the future.
[Editor’s Note: For a deeper dive into the documentary film whose soundtrack is reviewed here, see Peter’s review of it, from which this album review was excerpted and adapted.]