Danielle Miraglia has been a staple in the Boston music scene for quite a while.  I’ve seen her trading licks with some of the best guitar slingers around; I’ve seen her belting out a tune with husband Tom’s Baker Thomas Band at Toad; I’ve seen her holding her own on any given night—mostly singing traditional blues, r&b, or rock and her own bold and ballsy originals.  Danielle shares her affection for Cyndi Lauper with us here.  It’s a touching and very real testament to the power of music and how a young girl’s life was influenced by a pop icon.

To learn more about Danielle, visit her website.

Check out this video “All My Heroes Are Ghosts.”  The paintings were done by Lisa Bastoni!

Danielle will be appearing at the me&thee in Marblehead on Friday, February 22, 2019 in “Breaking Barriers: A Tribute to The Women Who Paved the Way.” She’ll be sharing the stage with Jenee Halstead, Samantha Farrell, and Lisa Bastoni.

Danielle writes:

When Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video came out, I had never heard or seen anything like it.  The bright orange hair, long on one side, shaved on the other.  The colorful funky makeup. The fishnet stockings and crazy flowing dresses.  No one looked like this.  And no one did pop quite this way – fun catchy songs that seemed to be made for me to sing.

The She’s So Unusual album had all the lyrics on the inside sleeve. That was still a new concept at the time.  My parents used to take me to the Hilltop Restaurant in Saugus, MA. The wait for a table there always felt like hours. This was long before ipads. One night I brought that album with me, enclosed myself and sat down in the indoor phone booth and read every lyric.  By a week later, there wasn’t an ooh or an ah that I couldn’t sing on queue along with her.

I was delighted to find out that my favorite older cousin was a huge fan as well and we took one of my Barbies, cut one side of her hair, painted it orange, used thin colorful markers to color around her eyes and transformed her into a Cyndi Lauper doll.

Years later revisiting the songs brings me back to that visceral joy and while as a child, she may have been something of a larger than life, doll-like character to me, as an adult and a musician, I now hear so much more in Cyndi Lauper’s music.  The brilliance and the beauty of the songwriting and rawness of her voice.

As if that wasn’t enough, she’s an amazing activist who invested in a shelter for LGBTQ teens who’ve been kicked out of their homes.  I’m tearing up just writing this.  In a time when so many childhood memories are being tainted by awful acts coming to light, it’s nice to have one of your heroes come through as a truly extraordinary person.