Six Degrees of She’s So Unusual
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.
The Album
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Sly irreverence and gutsy counter-culture packaged as disposable pop music, She's So Unusual ran a red-orange streak up the pop charts when it was released in 1984. On the surface, it was the perfect tonic for its time. Lauper, a Brooklyn native with a vaguely punk look and an accent as thick as New York smog, managed to combine coy new wave hooks with a relentless, ruthless individuality. On the surface, she almost seems like the Katy Perry of the 80s a dolled-up dilettante who dressed right and said little. Look below the surface, though, and She's So Unusual is actually devious and crafty. The album's breakout hit, known chiefly for its party-endorsing refrain, plays out more like an assertion of identity and individuality. Though it opens with Lauper grousing against the grown-ups, it ends with her thumbing her pierced nose at societal conventions, sneering "Some boys take a beautiful girl/ and hide her away from the rest of the world/ But I wanna be the one to walk in the sun." She gets brassier a few songs later, cooing "I wanna go south and get me some more" in the perky self-pleasure anthem "She Bop." The title sums up the record's whole ethos, serving as a sly put-down of the notion of the "strange girl" in other words: the girl who won't conform to traditional notions of gender, who won't settle down and act right, who won't purr for the camera or allow herself to be bedded or brided. To coin a modern phrase: fuck that noise. Lauper knew her place, and it was walking in the sun.
The Kiwi Revivalist
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An Australian in the '00s who sounds like an American in the '80s, Pip Brown revisits the Lauper template, cramming her songs with huge hooks and burbling new wave keyboards. And if she doesn't exactly have Lauper's drive for personal individualism, she's not exactly a shrinking violet. Ladyhawke is steely in its toughness. "Magic" opens the record with a sneer, Brown calling out a pathetic fanboy who woos her and then abandons her over a "Heart of Glass" synth line. She takes the opposite tack in the very next song, dicing up a two-faced backstabber on "Manipulating Woman." What makes the whole thing work so well is Brown's savvy for keen pop hooks. "Better Than Sunday" could have been brushing shoulders with "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on 80s radio, so shimmering is its chorus. Ladyhawke may be a revivalist, but she executes that revival with sass and panache.
The 21st-Century Heir
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A busy, dizzying record that snatches up everything from new wave to goth to reggae, the self-titled debut from Santogold matches Lauper's brashness note for note. A behind-the-scenes songwriter for years (and former vocalist for the Philly punk band Stiffed, Santi White proves musically omnivorous. Like Lauper, White kicks against pre-conceptions: When the record was initially released, several music vendors mistakenly classified it as R&B simply because White was African-American a fact she lashed out angrily against in interviews. Santogold is too big for just one description, but no matter the milieu, White grounds her songs in strong, singable melodies, from the spindly post-punk "L.E.S. Artistes" to the whooshing new wave of Bud Light Lime theme song "Lights Out." White consistently challenges unspoken but still clearly-present notions of what kind of music is "acceptable" from African-American artists, turning stylistic diversity into a statement of purpose.
The Fellow Juggernaut
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In truth, the songs themselves are almost beside the point. Kevin Barnes and his merry band of pranksters the unlikely Last Band Standing from the mighty mid '90s Elephant Six Collective, make music simply to tour behind. Their live shows give any 80s spectacle a run for its money: Barnes has been known to take the stage on horseback or to strip down to his altogether. This is performance pop, plain and simple, and the group's gradual reimagining of themselves as a spirited synth act as opposed to the 60s reviving Of Montreal of yore gives it an edge and grandeur. Listening to the bright, searing synths that shoot up the center of leadoff track "Suffer for Fashion" or the jaw-dropping 12-minute opus "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" and it's clear that Of Montreal are beholden to no one's vision but their own. Barnes & Co. may exist in the modern age, but their hearts beat 20 years earlier.
The Brightly Colored Freak Parade
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A clear sonic cousin to both Lauper and Ladyhawke, the Eurythmics manage to make pop music sound ominous. Annie Lennox's alto is rich and thick as burgundy wine, and paired with Dave Stewart's eerie, unsettling instrumentation, it makes for songs that are as singular as they are unforgettable. Lennox was "unusual," too: with her punky-pate of red-orange hair, her stern countenance and lanky physique, she seemed as much spirit as form, blowing ghostlike through these compositions. The Eurythmics were like Lauper's crueler older siblings, and their icy compositions continue to haunt decades on.
