SKU: A0.856143

SKU: A0.856166

This song was originally written and recorded in 1979 by Robert Hazard, who presented it from a male point of view, but it was made famous by Cyndi Lauper in 1983/4. Lauper tweaked the lyrics to turn it into a celebration of both female pleasure and female autonomy, and in doing so overturned the stereotypes of feminism of the era - becoming the voice of girl power for the generation before the Spice Girls.

Lauper has reworked the song into two subsequent versions, but this arrangement is based firmly on the 1980s version. It was written for a series of one-day workshops, and so was designed to combine musical interest for people spending a whole day singing it with ease of learning to allow participants to focus on performance elements beyond the notes.

The arrangement is notated in the traditional clefs for women's barbershop: treble and bass alta (i.e. sung an octave higher than written).

Vocal Ranges:

Tenor: E4 – E5
Lead: A3 – C#4
Bari: A3- B4
Bass: E3 – E4

SKU: A0.856230

This song lives on the cusp of Second Wave Feminism. Its lyrics portray a woman fighting to maintain her pride in a neglectful, if not outright abusive, relationship, although it remains, at this stage, still essentially masochistic. She berates, but - in the lyrics at least - does not challenge. The iconic performances from the late 1960s (Erma Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield), though, tell a different story. Anger is erupting into the voices: the personal is poised to become overtly political.

The arrangement sets the narrative verses in a melody-and-accompaniment texture, with the harmony parts largely on vocables to let the story through, then builds up to a primarily homophonic texture with everyone participating in the lyrics for the declarative mode of the choruses. It is built to chart a wide dynamic range, charting the emotional range of the original.

N.B. This arrangement is notated in treble and bass alta (i.e. sung an octave higher than written) clefs.

Vocal Ranges: