Lauper released a new version, "Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)", as the first single from her 1994 compilation album Twelve Deadly Cyns...and Then Some.
[11] The song was written in 1979 by rock musician Robert Hazard, who performed it with various bands in the Philadelphia area, and enjoyed some local college radio airplay with a demo recording he made.
Hazard's friend, producer Rick Chertoff, brought it to Cyndi Lauper to record as a pop-electronic song.
[13] For the recording sessions, Chertoff brought in two longtime musician friends from the Hooters: keyboardist Rob Hyman and guitarist Eric Bazilian.
The track is a synthesizer-backed anthem, from a feminist perspective, conveying the point that all women really want is to have the same experiences that men can have.
His 1984 album Wing of Fire was a sales disappointment at the same time that Lauper's version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was going Gold, making him a millionaire.
After Lauper claimed in interviews to have co-written the song, Hazard served her with a cease and desist letter.
He was able to buy a New Jersey lake house and a horse farm from the song's royalties, although he said that federal taxes took most of the money.
[12] Cash Box said that "Robert Hazard's original male point of view is transformed into a cheerleader-like sing-along for party girls, and the Toni Basil–like beat is augmented by a hooky, ringing guitar.
1 in ten of those countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and on the Irish Singles Chart.
[26] In Netherland and New Zealand "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" made the year end charts for the Top 100 of 1984.
On the ARC (American Radio Chart), "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" reached number 1 and made the Top 40 songs of the year for 1984.
It cost less than US$35,000 (equivalent to $107,000 in 2023), largely due to a volunteer cast and the free loan of the most sophisticated video equipment available at the time.
Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, another of Hoffman's clients, agreed to give Lauper free run of his brand new million-dollar digital editing equipment, with which she and her producer created several first-time-ever computer-generated images of Lauper dancing with her buttoned-up lawyer Hoffman, leading the entire cast in a snake-dance through New York streets and ending up in Lauper's bedroom in her home.
The video was shot in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in summer 1983 and premiered on television in December 1983.
[29] The choreography was by a New York dance and music troupe called XXY featuring Mary Ellen Strom, Cyndi Lee and Pierce Turner.
[30] In 2007, a limited edition which included interactive computer material and a code to download a free ringle of the title track was released.
On September 5, 1994, Lauper released a new version, "Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)", as the first single of her first compilation album, Twelve Deadly Cyns...and Then Some (1994).
Steve Baltin from Cash Box noted that the "reggae-flavored dance oriented remake" is being given a big boost from the film To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar.
"[91] In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton said, "The new version slows the track down to turn it into a far slinkier dance groove to quite inspired effect".
[92] Alan Jones from Music Week wrote, "Turning a familiar old favourite into a dance groove unusually required a drop in tempo here, reducing it to a slinky shuffle.
"[93] Tommy Udo of NME considered it a "totally unnecessary reworking" and commented, "It just sounds like somebody's hamfisted and amateurish remix that would normally be hidden away as track 18 – you know, the Will This Do?
"[94] A music video was produced to promote the new version, directed by Cyndi Lauper herself[95] and later made available on YouTube in 2010.
The physical edition was exclusively distributed to over 800 stores run by Tesco, an official partner of the event series.