Who recorded it first
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Not a Cyndi Lauper original — a 1979 Robert Hazard demo
This is a misattribution with a twist: an anthem of female solidarity was written — and first sung — by a man. Almost everyone takes ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ for a Cyndi Lauper original, but Lauper’s 1983 version is a cover. The song was written and first recorded as a demo by Robert Hazard in 1979, from a male narrator’s point of view. Lauper picked it up four years later, reworked the perspective, and turned it into her signature hit.
The record
Who recorded it first
How we traced it
The song was written by Robert Hazard, a Philadelphia rock musician, who composed it in 1979 and recorded it himself as a demo — from a male narrator’s point of view Wikipedia ↗.
Hazard’s demo circulated locally and earned some college-radio play, but he never released it as a commercial single. Producer Rick Chertoff brought the track to Cyndi Lauper to cut as a pop record.
Lauper recorded her version in 1983 and released it that October; she reworked the song’s perspective into an anthem of female solidarity, and it became so definitive that most listeners assume she wrote it — and that it was always a woman’s song Wikipedia ↗.
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Fact-check
The attribution problem
This is a misattribution with an extra layer: not only is Cyndi Lauper’s record a cover, but the anthem of female fun was written and first performed by a man. Nothing about Lauper’s version is fake — the only errors are believing she originated it, and assuming it was always a woman’s song.
‘It’s a Cyndi Lauper song’
Lauper’s 1983 version is a cover. The song was written and first recorded four years earlier, in 1979, by Robert Hazard the history ↗.
Robert Hazard, 1979
Hazard’s 1979 demo was sung from a male narrator’s point of view and never released commercially — which is exactly why the cover could eclipse it so completely. There was no famous original standing in the way.
Cyndi Lauper, 1983
Lauper changed the perspective and some of the lyrics, turning a man’s song into an anthem of female solidarity. The reading is so decisive that authorship — and even the song’s point of view — gets quietly reassigned to the performer.
Written and first recorded as a 1979 demo by Robert Hazard, and made famous — but not originated — by Cyndi Lauper in 1983 the writer ↗.
Context
Why the cover ate the original
A cover eclipses its original most completely when the original never had its moment. Robert Hazard’s ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ existed only as a 1979 demo; there was no hit record occupying the public’s memory of the song, so when Cyndi Lauper’s version arrived it simply became the version, with nothing to displace.
The twist is that Lauper did more than out-sell the original — she reversed its point of view. Hazard wrote it as a man’s song; Lauper reworked it into a woman’s declaration. When a cover changes not just who is famous for a song but what the song is about, listeners stop hearing it as anyone else’s at all.
The two records, in order
- Robert Hazard writes ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ and records it as a demo (1979).
- The demo, sung from a male point of view, gets some local college-radio play but no commercial release.
- Producer Rick Chertoff brings the song to Cyndi Lauper.
- Lauper records her version in 1983, reworking the perspective and some lyrics into an anthem of female solidarity.
- Released October 1983 on Portrait → a worldwide hit; it becomes the definitive version, and the demo fades from public memory.
An anthem of female solidarity that began as a man’s demo — the cover didn’t just win the song, it changed what it meant.