OH CYNDI, DEAR, YOU KNOW YOU'RE STILL NO.1

Twenty-five years after Girls Just Want To Have Fun made Cyndi Lauper a 1980s pop icon, the New Yorker returns with a new album and a tour promoting human rights, says Declan Cashin.Cyndi Lauper has the strongest 'Noo Yawk' accent I've ever heard, so it was probably not the best idea to volunteer to teach her some Irish during the course of a transatlantic phone call that had a five-second delay due to being relayed through a London agency. "My son's name is Declan too," she tells me excitedly after I introduce myself (though junior Lauper's version is spelled 'Declyn', named, she reveals, after Declan McManus aka Elvis Costello). "Do you want to know how to say the name in Irish?" I volunteer. "Sure," she replies, and so begins two minutes of comical, at times painful, phonetic lessons as Gaeilge ("It's pronounced 'Day-glaw-en', come on Cyndi, one more time"). At any rate, the pop legend will have time to perfect her new found language skills this week when she touches down here for the first time in her career, playing the Savoy in Cork on Friday night, and a sold out date in Tripod, Dublin, on Saturday. Almost 25 years to the day since the release of She's So Unusual, the monster hit album that contained such enduring classics as Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Time After Time and She Bop, the 55-year-old Brooklyn native is back on tour to promote her tenth studio album, Bring Ya To The Brink.Having seen her last two albums -- At Last and The Body Acoustic -- fail to make any major critical or commercial impact, Lauper is in the thrust of a full-blown career renaissance right now, drawing five-star reviews for her new effort, a dance and club-fused stomper with collaborative input from Euro dance-pop maestros such as Dragonette, Scum Frog and, most notably, Basement Jaxx. "I just wanted to make some music with energy," Lauper explains. "I found that the dance community is a little more innovative, and adventurous. So I reached out to artist-producers to make this unique sound, as opposed to just producers in their own right. I was looking to push the envelope a bit, and make something that was familiar and joyful, and let's face it, dancing is about as joyful as it can get."The sound and style of Bring Ya To The Brink has also drawn fresh comparisons between Lauper and that other opinionated, middle-aged pop diva looking to keep her sound modern and relevant: Madonna. The two stars burst onto the scene at almost the same time in the early 1980s, but went on to have wildly divergent careers. It must be sweet, therefore, to read the words of one British music critic who wrote that Bring Ya To The Brink was "the album Madonna should have made instead of Hard Candy". Lauper pauses momentarily when I ask if she recognizes any parallels between their careers. "You know, I think Madonna was always better at some things than I was," she replies. "I focused more on singing, and writing poetry. She was focussed on writing too, but she comes at it from a totally different place. "I think she comes at performance art like a dancer, and I couldn't dance to save my life. I think she's a big inspiration for me sometimes, but we're like apples and oranges. I always say I'm like her evil cousin from a completely different family!"Aside from her new album, the singer's stock has also been given a boost due to the True Colours tour, a collaborative project she created last year to raise awareness of human rights issues, notably on behalf of the gay community, of which she has been a vocal and fiercely pro-active supporter for many years. The second tour, which just finished in July, featured the likes of Indigo Girls, Andy Bell, Regina Spektor and Joan Armatrading, as well as performances from comediennes Margaret Cho and Rosie O'Donnell. "I do as much as I can for the gay community," she says. "But, you know, I'm not Oprah. I can't build a school in Africa, but I think everyone should do what they can."I just think that everybody's civil rights are up for grabs if one group doesn't have them. What they're saying is, 'We live in a free society...oh, except for you guys over there'. That means you could be in the next group that's the exception, and then the next group, then that group, and that's how it starts."I don't think it should be tolerated. If something happens that you think is wrong, you have to raise your voice. This is supposed to be the age of reason."Lauper also used this year's True Colours tour to appeal to American attendees to vote in next month's presidential election, and it's not surprising to hear who will be receiving Lauper's vote on November 4. "I think Barack Obama would understand what it's like to be discriminated against compared to McCain or Sarah Palin," she states. What does she make of Palin? "Not for nothing, Declyn plays hockey so that makes me a hockey mom and I don't talk like that," she says. "It will be interesting to see what happens." Bring Ya To The Brink is out now. Tickets are still available for Cyndi's show in The Savoy, Cork, on Friday night.