Credit: Chapman BaehlerCyndi Lauper is known for her colorful style, but she tells Rolling Stone that it wasn’t always easy to stay true to her bold image. The pink-haired 62-year-old — whose first country album, DETOUR, comes out Friday — credits Lady Gaga with reminding her to embrace her uniqueness.
“There was a time, around the early ’90s, when they kept telling me, ‘Your true colors should just shine from the inside,’ and I got plainer and plainer and plainer,” she says of her corporate critics. “I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘Who the f*** are you?’ I think I was floundering. When I met Lady Gaga [in 2009], I think I woke up. ‘I’ll have freaking colored hair when I want!'”
Lauper says she’d never have made it on shows like The Voice or American Idol, “because I wouldn’t want to listen to somebody telling me what the f*** to do.” But she did try her hand at reality TV once. The singer was a contestant on season nine of The Celebrity Apprentice. So what does she think of her former “boss,” Donald Trump?
“At the time I said he seemed nice because he had nice children, and that I wish I was so smart that I could get people to work that stinking hard and just show up and wave and say, ‘OK, you’re fired!'” she says of the Republican presidential candidate. “But you don’t go on TV as a presidential candidate and talk about the size of your hand. You don’t do it. It’s so f****** juvenile and stupid.”
She adds, “You think I want that person next to that red button? I don’t freaking think so.” For the record, Lauper’s a Hillary Clinton fan.
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