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Watch St. Vincent and Alexis Krauss Join Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’

cyndi lauper, st. vincent, rosie o'donnell, sleigh bells

Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” occupies a special place in the pop universe. When the working day is done, those who’d deny the song’s defiantly frivolous allure have only themselves to blame for their bad time. But the song Lauper made famous in the ’80s with a little help from MTV doesn’t seem to get the retrospective critical regard that even the stuffiest of rock snobs has long since granted to, say, Madonna. This shaky fan footage (via Pitchfork) of Lauper belting out her hit over the weekend with Sleigh Bells’ Alexis Krauss and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark shouldn’t make any best-of-the-2010s lists. But despite its serious context — a show for her True Colors Fund to benefit homeless LGBT youth — the slightly abbreviated clip is fun, period. And as with Lauper’s performance of the song last year with Arcade Fire, it places “Girls” amid a critic-adored pantheon where it has arguably belonged all along. Oh, also that’s Rosie O’Donnell on the drums.