Cyndi Lauper was done – or so she thought – with her classic 1983 debut album “She’s So Unusual”, but something was missing for producer Rick Chertoff.
“Rick came over one day and said, ‘We could use one more song,'” Rob Hyman, who played keyboards on the LP, told The Post. “And I was like, ‘One more song – you’ve got to be kidding!’ We were really spent.
But after months of working tirelessly on the album that would turn the singer into a pop superstar, Hyman and Lauper came together “Frequently,” The bittersweet song that became her first No. 1 hit 40 years ago — proving that this girl was as funny as she was funny.
“People thought, ‘Oh, she’s kind of a fun pop singer,’ and the singing commercials and sounds she was doing in ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun,’ she had a unique voice,” Hyman said. “And then you hear him singing something like ‘Time After Time,’ which is heartbreaking.”
In fact, the second single “She’s So Unusual” would prove that the success of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was no fluke – and that Lauper was an artist to be taken seriously. It solidified the foundation for a great career that the New York native would bring her “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” farewell tour Wednesday night at Hometown Arena Madison Square Garden.
Hyman was making waves with his own group, the Hooters, when he and bandmate Eric Bazilian were approached by Chertoff, a college friend from the University of Pennsylvania, to play on Lauper’s debut LP.
Hyman said, “Cindy and Rick were looking for musicians to bring a group spirit.” “Rick brought Cindy to New York to see Hooters on the Bottom Line… and the rest is really history.”
After making the demo of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” “she bop,” After recording “All Through the Night” and the rest of the album in Philadelphia – “We introduced him to cheesesteak,” he said – they went to New York for final studio sessions at the Record Plant. It was here, in the eleventh hour of recording, that “Time After Time” was born.
“One night, everyone went out to dinner, and Cindy and I stayed in the studio,” Hyman recalled. “She had a title, which was ‘Time After Time,’ which she came up with from a time-travel movie malcolm mcdowellAnd he said, ‘Hey, what about that?’
“And I sat down at the piano, and I just started playing ‘Time After Time.’ It was more of an uptempo kind of thing, more of a bouncy feel to it, like a reggae groove. She would just be grooving to the music and dancing around and walking around the studio.”
But to highlight the beauty of this tune, its rhythm was removed. “It had a lot of momentum and then it slowed down,” Hyman said. “And then we started digging into the lyrics. And that’s when it changed from this bouncy pop song to something deeper and more personal.”
In fact, this timeless love song was inspired by both of their own romantic entanglements.
“At the time, her relationship was with her manager, Dave Wolf,” Hyman said. “So building business relationships and personal relationships was difficult. I was having my own thoughts and I think we shared those thoughts.”
This tune was produced much faster than the rest of “She’s So Unusual”. “We were in the studio, so we went straight to recording the tracks,” Hyman said. “I always say the record is the demo. What you’re hearing is almost a first-time thing.”
But Hyman’s melodies that turn “Time After Time” into a virtual duet in the chorus were not originally planned for the record.
“I was singing this harmony with her and it just had this vibe to it,” he said. “And I kind of thought, ‘Okay, this is a placeholder reference part.’ But I was thrilled that they wanted to keep it.
When “Time After Time” was released as a single in March 1994, it was the perfect change. “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” “We were calling it a one-two punch,” Hyman said. “She wasn’t surprised for once.”
The song was a critical as well as commercial success, and was nominated for Song of the Year at the 1985 Grammy Awards.
“And the competition was crazy: Phil Collins, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie. It was Tina Turner who won [with] ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It.’ ,
Four decades later, Hyman and Lauper are collaborating again on a musical adaptation of the 1988 film “Working Girl” — “I think it’s getting there,” he said — and “Time After Time” is still winning hearts. Used to be.
“We were following the inspiration that you follow,” he said, “and sometimes you get lucky.”
