On Saturday night, Cyndi Lauper played the last North American show of her farewell tour at Atlantic City’s Hard Rock Live. Though the pop star isn’t fully retiring from the stage — she still plans to play one-off shows in the future — she’s said this is the final time she plans to perform on this scale, the final time she’ll tour, and she went big, headlining a run of arenas for the first time since 1987. The energy she brought to the stage was tremendous, and the show was a wide-ranging overview of her career.
Lauper took to the Etess Arena stage as the intro to “She Bop” was accompanied by a blast of confetti canons. She then gave a rollicking performance of the hit single while dressed in a Bowie-style sequined jumpsuit. Her celebration of women’s empowerment didn’t end there.
Cyndi Lauper | photo by John Vettese for WXPN
Throughout the night, Lauper told stories about her career, demonstrating that she never compromised her art for popularity. She spoke of how she was on the road to stardom and realized that she didn’t like being subject to what her label wanted; she then tried acting and realized those people were even more clueless. However, her turn in the 1988 film Vibes was what led her to meet the very people who would help her realize her artistic vision, as well as her community.
She credited the late, great Allee Willis for co-writing the song “Who Let In the Rain?” from her magnum opus Hatful of Stars and starting her next chapter. Her performance of this song was beautiful and punctuated by her backup singers Elaine Caswell and Neal Coomer’s emotion and choreography.
Lauper mixed the classics like “Time After Time,” a rocking “Change of Heart,” and “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” (dedicated to her late pro-wrestling friends) with some songs casual fans may not be familiar with. She talked about working with her old band Blue Angel and her realization that she could tailor a song like a suit. This was followed by a jaw-dropping performance of Gene Pitney’s “I’m Gonna Be Strong,” which was featured on Blue Angel’s sole album.
Cyndi Lauper | photo by John Vettese for WXPN
At this point Lauper had little to prove to the crowd, but that didn’t stop her. Her dedication to the rights of marginalized people has always been at the forefront of her work. She even pointed out that her reasoning for recording “I Drove All Night” was because there were very few songs at the time about women driving. She ended the night with three powerful songs: “Shine,” “True Colors,” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
Ending the night on her biggest hit, she brought out opener Gayle to sing with her and paid homage to Yayoi Kusama with the Japanese artist’s work as both a backdrop and as their costume. Both Lauper and Kusama are people who have shared their art and vulnerability with the world in the hopes that we all will be free to have fun without consequence.
Gayle | photo by John Vettese for WXPN
Opener Gayle gave a high energy set playing songs from her EP cleverly titled This Was My Setlist When I Opened up for People This Year. She also did a spirited cover of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets,” which had the crowd and Hard Rock staff singing and clapping along, and ended with her hit “ABCDEFU,” which elicited another sing-a-long from all generations at the venue.
Though Lauper’s last tour of North American is done, she has a handful of dates in Europe and Asia in 2025; her final announced show happens in April in Tokyo (full dates can be found here), though she told the crowd that her next project is a theatrical rendition of Working Girl that comes to Broadway in 2026. See more photos and the setlist from Lauper’s Atlantic City show below.