In 1983, Cyndi Lauper’s debut solo single, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” was flopping so badly that her record company had given up on it.
But the singer and her then-manager and boyfriend, David Wolff, still believed in what would become her signature song.
Given only two weeks to make the single a hit, Wolff came up with the idea for her to partner with wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano — who played Lauper’s father in the “Girls” video — to promote her music via the World Wrestling Federation, the precursor to today’s World Wrestling Enterprises.
Albano would make sexist comments at matches or on TV appearances, and Lauper would respond with an in-your-face feistiness.
“It worked,” says Lauper, 69, in her new documentary “Let the Canary Sing,” which premiered at NYC’s Beacon Theatre on Wednesday night as part of the Tribeca Festival.
“It had to. That’s all we could do.”
The party anthem went zooming up the charts, and Lauper’s career took off with her Grammy-winning album “She’s So Unusual” — all while she continued to banter with Albano in a manufactured feud, make appearances in the ring and even “manage” wrestler Wendi Richter.
In the end, it was a big win for the New York native — she would go on to become one of the biggest icons of ’80s music.
Born in Brooklyn, Lauper grew up in the Ozone Park section of Queens, where she discovered her quintessentially quirky sense of style from the women in the neighborhood.
“It was an extraordinary time for fashion,” she recalls in the doc. “They had a certain look … tomato-red hair and dyed-black hair and thick lipstick. There was a sexiness to it.”
But Lauper also got some style inspiration from an unlikely source while going to Catholic school.
“There was this priest,” she recalls. “He had a black skirt over the white pants … the whole, like, multigender thing.”
Lauper had an allegedly abusive stepfather who caused her older sister Ellen to leave home.
“I was still in high school,” she says. “It was devastating — only because Ellen was always my hero, and because Ellen was there it was OK. But when she left, it was horrible.”
She spiraled out of control. “As a kid, you don’t just deal with shit,” says Lauper. “So I started to do the destructive thing. I took LSD and came home really stoned.”
After a few months, Ellen — who had come out as a lesbian — insisted that Lauper come live with her in an apartment building in Valley Stream, Long Island. There, the future star met a gay couple, Carl and Gregory, who took her under their wing.
“We talked about everything from fashion to movies,” she recalls of her late teen years. “It was free.”
(Gregory would ultimately give poignant meaning to her No. 1 hit “True Colors,” which she recorded as he was dying of AIDs in the mid ’80s.)
In 1977, a 20-something Lauper — who had been performing with various cover bands — lost her voice from not singing properly while mimicking the likes of Janis Joplin.
“I was really depressed,” she says. “I was even suicidal.”
She spent a year recovering her voice — a force of nature that can go from a whisper to a wail — with the help of a new vocal teacher, and then formed a ’50s-style group called Blue Angel with keyboardist/saxophonist John Turi.
The band released its self-titled debut in 1980, but was soon entangled in legal drama after the group fired their manager.
He turned around and sued Lauper for $80,000, and she was forced to file for bankruptcy to afford a lawyer.
Ultimately, Lauper prevailed and the judge’s ruling inspired the name of the documentary.
He banged his gravel and said, “Let the canary sing!”
But it wasn’t so simple.
When Lauper first heard “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” — which was written and originally recorded by the Hooters’ Robert Hazard — she hated it and refused to do it.
Becoming more confident in her own singular style and what she could do to make the song her own, Lauper ultimately relented.
She says, “I felt like we could arrange this thing and make it sound like such fun.”