I thought I had posted this already, but since the search engine is telling me otherwise, have a listen to what Girls Just Want To Have Fun sounded like when it was first written.
Quite a bit different, isn’t it?
The first thing you likely noticed is that the fella singing there is definitely not Cyndi Lauper. Some finely tuned ears you’ve got there, my friend. He’s Robert Hazard, the original songwriter. As far as I can tell this is by far the most famous thing he ever did, although he does seem to have had an interesting career up until his death in 2008. He recorded this as a demo in 1979, but not much really came of it until 1983 when this happened.
Which leads me to the second thing I noticed.
No disrespect intended to Mr. Hazard here, but boy oh boy does it ever sound better as we know it. There’s nothing wrong with his version, but I can’t imagine it being anywhere near as successful had it kept that style.