Sometimes, Girls Just Want to Sing

You innocently happen upon the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's 2026 induction ceremony on the first day of the new year. You see some faces and hear some voices: flashes from the past. Some of them bring casual comfort — memories of what seem like simpler times, even if they weren’t, given the constantly impending Soviet threat of nuclear war and all the rest. In a somewhat rare moment of relaxation — and while it’s still the Christmas season — you start singing along with an old familiar tune.

And then it becomes political.

Can we please stop making everything political?

Papa, don't preach, I'm in trouble deep.

Papa, don't preach, I've been losing sleep.

But I made up my mind, I'm keeping my baby.

I'm gonna keep my baby.

You may remember this song from the 1980s. I have no delusions that it was meant to be a pro-life anthem. But join me in a little thought experiment. Let’s say I’m Madonna and I’m being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (She was actually inducted back in 2008, but bear with me.) During my Hall of Fame performance, you see images of young people who spend all night in buses every January to join the March for Life in Washington, D.C. We add some sonogram photos of developing babies in their mothers’ wombs. Maybe I, Madonna, add some new lyrics to the song about how women deserve better than abortion. Maybe I add something about foster care and adoption and families. I can’t quite imagine that most of the audience would be nodding in agreement, having the desires of their hearts finally articulated.

But something like that really happened as silly me was singing along with Cyndi Lauper (Eighties’ pop-culture habits die hard), who was inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November as part of the class of 2025 and performed a few of her hits, such as “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” For some of us gals who got Casio keyboards after Rainbow Brite, singing along to such songs could feel as though the weight of all the year’s concerns was being lifted. So, you hear the words to “True Colors” and maybe hum them:

You with the sad eyes

Don't be discouraged

Oh I realize

It's hard to take courage

In a world full of people

You can lose sight of it all

And the darkness inside you

Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors

Shining through

As you may also remember well, Lauper continues: “I see your true colors and that's why I love you.” This is everything, in a sense — to see the good in people, especially when they are suffering. And we suffer in myriad ways. But just as we’re reminded that the song is potentially a meditation on life, we see the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag displayed as the backdrop.

It is entirely possible that Lauper simply wanted to convey a kind of radical hospitality in the tradition of the likes of 20th-century activist Dorothy Day. But unless we have been living in a cave, we are fully aware that this flag is not child’s play. It invokes an ideology that undermines marriage, family, and the human person. Her remarks that night conveyed something real and laudable — that casually singing a song most of us know might just be a way to bring us together. But if you want to bring everybody together, don’t lead with what divides.

Let songs speak for themselves. Art invites us to see a reality deeper than our daily routines. When we are singing the songs we have come to know and love, leave the flags behind. Leave behind the politics for as much of the day as possible. Then we may finally breathe and sing.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.