In 2010, Donald Trump told an underperforming Cyndi Lauper on his TV show “Celebrity Apprentice” that she was fired.
Someone should have fired Lauper for the first half of her set Saturday in a sold-out, co-headlining show with Boy George at Sands Bethlehem Event Center.
In 45 minutes, Lauper had only done five songs, and only one hit, a flat version of 1984’s “She Bop” that had none of the fun of the original.
Instead, the 62-year-old Lauper spent nine minutes in a meandering monologue about why she made her new country album, “Detour,” then singing four song from it that were weak, starting with a version of Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love” sung in a chirpy faux 1980s voice.
Sorry, Cyndi, the country thing doesn’t work. Lauper was off-time on Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” – and she’s no Patsy Cline to begin with. It seemed Lauper couldn’t decide whether to be serious or goofy – the latter approach replacing Cline’s brassiness.
Lauper, with her hair pink and dressed largely in black leather, even rode a stick horse on Patsy Montana’s groundbreaking song “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” as if she was making fun of country music.
Only on Skeeter Davis’ “The End of the World” did Lauper approach a serious attempt at country, but again fell short of Davis’ rendition.
In that long explanation, Lauper noted she was once in a rockabilly band. What she didn’t note was that the band went nowhere.
Actually, it was lucky Lauper wasn’t fired. Because the second half of her set was dramatically better.
As if someone turned on a switch, Lauper played a great version of her 1989 gold hit “I Drove All Night,” laying on a box with her head draped backward and upside down while kicking her legs. And she wailed vocally.
Then even better was her debut album’s cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine.” A great song to which her four-person band added great synth, Lauper absolutely killed it, her singing filled with passion. It was the best of the night.
And then she closed her main set with a very good version of “Money Changes Everything” – far more comfortable and confident, her voice far better, too. Even her band was better – playing the melodica that The Hooters’ Rob Hyman played so distinctly on the disc.
For her encore, Lauper did “Misty Blue,” the most fitting and best of her country offerings, but still not great. Then a very good version of her No. 1 hit “Time After Time,” seated while playing a zither, and a closing six-minute version of her biggest hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” that could have done without the rap midsection. Lauper also screwed up the words.
And in what seemed like an afterthought, she came out for a second encore and did a two-minute a cappella version of her only other No. 1 hit, “True Colors,” with the crowd singing chunks of even that.
In a set that lasted just 65 minutes, with only 20 minutes of that her biggest songs, Lauper skipped Top 4 hits “All Through the Night” and “Change of Heart.”
Someone could get fired for doing that.
Boy George’s approach to his 67-minute, 13-song set was far different, and far better – much better than the middling performance he gave with Culture Club at Bethlehem’s Musikfest festival in August.
After opening with his solo song “Funtime,” George played most of Culture Club’s hits: “It’s a Miracle,” “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” and an enthusiastic “Church of he Poison Mind.”
Though the 54-year-old George’s voice is far more restrained and weaker than it was decades ago, all of the songs were enthusiastic and fun – so much so that many in the crowd were up and dancing.
George told the crowd he had come to the Lehigh Valley a day early to spend a day at Carson Kressley’s Lehigh County “ranch,” but twice during set incorrectly called out to “Pittsburgh.”
George, flamboyantly dressed in gold lame parachute pants, with a checkered suit coat and oversized yellow fedora and wearing blue eye shadow, also sang some nicely chosen covers. He did justice to David Bowie’s “The Jean Genie,” emphatic in a deeper voice, his nine-person band adding good sax and harmonica. [Part of the reason George was better than at Musikfest was that his band was better.]
He did a campy but intentional version of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” that had the crowd singing along, and a reggae version of Bread’s “Everything I Own.”
He closed his main set with a run of hits. He had his best vocals of the night on Culture Club’s breakthrough chart-topper, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” and was very good on the underappreciated 2013 solo single “King of Everything.” He introduced 1984’s “Miss Me Blind” as “that disco-y song, when we were trying to be Shalamar.” But it’s a good song.
And George ended with an excellent “Bow Down Mister,” the British hit with his post-Culture Club project Jesus Loves You. It was an authentic shot of gospel music, and unlike Lauper’s country music, fit Boy George exceptionally well.
The encore brought out Lauper and George together for a good “Karma Chameleon” on which Lauper’s vocals were totally lost, then a cover of T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” on which Lauper’s voice was better than on most of her own set, again wailing a long, loud note.
Lauper again screwed up the words – “This is live music, baby!” George intoned.
But that’s not a firing offense.
Rosie O’Donnell bridged the two performers with a patently awful 10 minutes of what she apparently thought was comedy. She took the stage to some boos from the crowd.
Her “jokes” were making fun of the speech impediments of Lauper and Penny Marshall, and criticizing her teenage children – one of whom last fall reportedly said O’Donnell kicked her out of the house — and peoples’ skin color.
Donald Trump was right about O’Donnell, too.
