Girls just wanna have fun. But women in 2025 just wanna have their fundamental rights.

In what is being billed as her farewell tour, a radiant, 72-year-old Cyndi Lauper claimed her full, cumulative power Tuesday in an epic, joyful, multigenerational concert at a nearly full Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Greenwood Village.

Deftly shifting between her “aw shucks” blue-collar borough persona and a potent and glamorous example of the American immigrant dream realized, Lauper uplifted, encouraged, inspired, charmed and dazzled a mixed crowd made up almost entirely of people younger than she is.

That’s staying power. That’s legacy.

“There was no way I wasn’t going to come and say goodbye to you guys,” she said to cheers. 

Lauper, making her first appearance in Denver since touring with Cher in 2014, had some things to say on her way out of the international spotlight, and Tuesday’s crowd was there to listen and sing along. Twice, as if we were all gathered in front of a campfire, Lauper embarked on long, vast, stream-of-conscious rambles that made plain her next stop should be a concert residency on Broadway, following the recent examples of Bruce Springsteen and David Byrne.

You wanted to hear her sing. But you didn’t want her to stop talking.

She was adorable, fierce and ferocious.

Many of the young women, men and those yet to decide who came dressed in sparkles and lavender mohawks to lawn-dance the night away might not have known that, not so long ago, women like Lauper’s single mother were not allowed to have a bank account that wasn’t in a man’s name. Lauper was there to tell them.

Or that you couldn’t get a credit card if you were a woman until 1971, when New York congresswoman Bella Abzug made it happen. Lauper was there to tell them.

Or that, into the 1980s, if you were a woman, you couldn’t get a business loan without a male signature. Lauper was there to tell them.

Before she became the queen of Queens, a young Lauper saw neighborhood homing pigeons living most of their existence in cramped rooftop coops only to experience momentary bouts of freedom as an analogy. In them, she saw both the great beauty and terrible sadness of being an American woman. Her song “Sally’s Pigeons,” gorgeously animated for this concert, was inspired by a childhood friend of Lauper’s who died from a back-alley abortion.

Lauper told the Springsteen-worthy origin story of her song, “I Drove All Night” in 1989. 

“I wrote that song because, at the time, there wasn’t anything on the radio about women driving,” she said. “Except here;s the thing, ladies: When you have a license and you can get in your car and go wherever the hell you want, that’s power. That’s freedom. And that’s what I was saying.”

The performance had taken on legendary status before she even came close to her closing cavalcade of hits. That had been sealed when early on, she sang the Frankie Laine cover “I’m Gonna Be Strong.”

“I just want the same civil liberties as any man,” she said, in her no-nonsense, no-big-whup way. “Who wouldn’t, right? Equality for all, not just some. What can I say? I was raised reading the Constitution …”

The concert was itself a work of art, one Lauper said was inspired by The Living Art Movement, and specifically a group of artists who tested the conventional boundaries between art and technology in 1910-30s Paris. Lauper, who playfully maneuvered through six wigs and nine smashing costume changes designed by Geoffrey Mac and Christian Siriano, cited abstract Ukrainian artist and costume designer Sonia Delaunay, who was one of the first female modern artists known for wearing her art.

She spoke of French artist Robert Delaunay, Matisse, Picasso and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose “A Coney Island of the Mind” inspired her song “Into the Nightlife.” It was like attending a concert and a salon at once.

And before she ended the night with the song you already know she ended the night with, she spoke of Yayoi Kusama, just as the lights, set, graphics and costumes were taken over by the iconic Japanese artist’s signature red polka dots. Kusama is now a globally celebrated contemporary performance artist known for working with vibrant colors and immersive installations like her famous “Infinity Mirror Rooms. But coming to America in the late ‘50s, she was desolate and toiled in obscurity while Andy Warhol and others gained fame taking inspiration from her.

Lauper visited Kusama’s museum in Tokyo in 2019, which led to a meeting that culminated in Lauper’s decision to dedicate the farewell tour’s jaw-dropping visuals as a tribute to Kusama’s work.

Lauper’s remarkable journey is best embodied in her analogous story of Mary Clayton, who served as the primary female backup singer on the Rolling Stones’ seminal “Gimme Shelter” album. There was a time when Lauper’s greatest ambition was to join Clayton as a successful background singer. With her funny accent, unusual style and modest upbringing, she never envisioned herself as a frontwoman.

But the problem with being a background singer, she said, is that you had to wear the platforms and dance and sing at the same time – ”and I used to fall a lot,” she said. Finally, a band manager who took notice of her stumbles made the call that changed her life.

“He said, ‘Listen, you see that girl in the back who keeps falling? She’s got a good voice. Just make her a lead singer, and I’ll manage her.’ And that’s how I became the lead singer.”

Talk about falling up. The American Dream.

70 and counting

CONCERTS UPCOMING:

• Danny Elfman (Oingo Boingo), 72, with The Colorado Symphony, Aug. 17 at Fiddler’s Green
• Heart with Todd Rundgren, Aug. 19 at Red Rocks (Ann Wilson is 75; Rundgren is 77)
• Chicago, Aug. 24 Fiddler’s Green (Robert Lamm is 80)
• Neil Young, 79, Sept. 1 at Fiddler’s Green
• Bonnie Raitt, 75, Sept. 25 at Red Rocks
• The Sex Pistols, Oct. 10, Mission Ballroom (Steve Jones will be 70)
• Paul McCartney, 83, Oct. 11 at Coors Field
• Marshall Tucker Band, Oct. 26 at the Paramount (Doug Gray is 77)
• Boz Scaggs, 77, Nov. 1 at the Paramount
• Daryl Hall, 78, Nov. 4 at the Paramount
• Devo, Nov. 13, Mission Ballroom (Mark Mothersbaugh is 75)

 2025 CONCERTS SO FAR:

• Cyndi Lauper, 72, Aug. 12 at Fiddleer’s Green
• Rick Springfield, 75, Aug. 7 at Fiddler’s Green
• ZZ Top, Aug. 4 at Red Rocks (Billy Gibbons is 75) 
• The Beach Boys, Aug. 3 at Red Rocks (Mike Love is 84)
• X and Los Lobos, July 19 at the Paramount (John Doe is 72, David Hidalgo is 70)
• John Williams, 93, with the Colorado Symphony at Fiddler’s Green
• James Taylor, 77, June 13-14 at Red Rocks 
• Earth Wind and Fire, June 14 at Fiddler’s Green (Philip Bailey is 75)
• Pure Prairie League, June 1 at the Paramount (John David Call is about 80)
• Sting, 73, May 19-20 and 22 at Red Rocks
• Air Supply, May 1 at Paramount (Russell Hitchcock is 76)

TRIBUTE BANDS

• Rocky Mountain High Experience: A John Denver Christmas, Dec. 17 at Paramount (John Denver would be 81)
• Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening, Aug. 8 at the Paramount (John Bonham would be 77)
• Killer Queen, July 28 at Red Rocks (Freddy Mercury would be 79) 
• Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration, July 6 at Red Rocks (Jerry Garcia would be 83)