How a reshaped guitar riff ended up saving Cyndi Lauper’s breakthrough hit

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Pity the lot of the session player. For their - often crucial - contributions to songs invariably go unnoticed. And unrewarded.

Take Eric Bazilian for example. The ex-Hooters guitarist has played with Mick Jagger and Joan Osborne – indeed, he wrote Osborne’s 1995 hit One Of Us. But his greatest contribution to pop music might be something he added to Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 breakthrough hit.

In the new issue of Guitar World, Bazilian reveals that he played a crucial role in shaping that soundtrack to a million and one hen nights, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Apparently, it was a song which she initially dismissed completely.

“She was on board with everything except Girls,” Bazilian says. “She hated it. (She said) ‘I will never sing that song!’”

So Bazilian tried to reshape the opening riff. And he was suitably inspired by an unlikely source.

“We tried it every which way - rocking it out, doing it ska - but she still hated it,” he continues. “One day, I heard Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, so I started playing the opening lick of Girl with that feel.”

“Cyndi started singing to it, Rob played a keyboard pad on top, and (producer) Rick Chertoff’s eyes opened wide. It was like magic.”

“By the end of the day, Cyndi was saying, 'I’ve always wanted to sing that song!' She thought it would be very empowering to women.”

Lauper did play her part, though. In a 2019 interview with ABC News Radio, she revealed that she tweaked the original lyrics, which were written by Robert Hazard, to make them less cringy.

Girls... would be the lead single from Lauper’s She’s So Unusual album and made Number Two in both the US and UK charts. It’s since gone on to become a modern standard and no doubt will still be played long after Lauper, Bazilian or indeed all of us are long gone.

Seeing how successful the song has gone on to become has been a bittersweet experience for Bazilian, who received nothing for his suggestions other than his session fee. “I saw the Barbie movie, and all they used was my guitar riff,” he says. “People hear those first three notes, and they know what the song is. I played that, but I didn’t get credit for myself because I was paid as a session musician.

“It just gets tiring because I’m not getting paid. But when I saw Barbie and I heard that riff, it’s like, I know what a sync like that is worth.”