Girls Just Want to Have Fun

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.