Cyndi Lauper Consoles a Post-Election Crowd in San Francisco

Cyndi Lauper didn’t once mention the election Tuesday night, but it hung in the air so clearly that she didn’t need to. For a San Francisco crowd that included Nancy Pelosi in the third row, Lauper acknowledged the past three weeks without once saying the E-word or, God forbid, the T-word.

“I never thought I’d be a second-class citizen again, and not have autonomy over my own body because of my gender,” she said at one point. She talked about rock bands full of “men, men, men, men, men”; she spoke of the power in a woman driving herself somewhere, or writing her own songs.

And, after opener “She Bop” — a once-scandalous ode to (gasp!) female masturbation that underscored just how far American society has progressed since the 1980s — she talked about pretty much anything on her mind, like the ways American society has moved backward, particularly on women’s equal rights.

Lauper is on what she’s promising is her final tour, and she’s so beloved by fans that she padded an hour-and-45-minute farewell set with these extended, off-the-cuff monologues. But it was the songs that got the people to their feet, from the belting Gene Pitney torch ballad “I’m Gonna Be Strong’ to the No. 1 single “Time After Time,” performed to an arena bathed in phone lights.

It is an odd artifact of the 1980s that both Cyndi Lauper and Donald Trump advocated for and participated in pro wrestling. “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” and its attendant film montage gave Lauper a reason to shout out wrestlers like Lou Albano, Fred Blassie and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

How Trump used pro wrestling’s playbook and a reality TV show (on which Lauper appeared) to commandeer a political party and twice take over a nation will be studied for decades. For her part, Lauper on Tuesday night introduced a song that, as she said, seemed more true than ever: “Money Changes Everything.”

In fact, just about any song from Lauper’s smash album She’s So Unusual won over the mostly 40-and-up crowd. During “When You Were Mine,” the masterwork by Prince about the aftermath of a situationship, you could feel the energy of thousands of people remembering what the song once meant to them, or who they shared it with, and where, long ago.

That connection persisted for “True Colors,” the enduring LGBTQ anthem which Lauper performed on a small stage in the center of the arena, a sheer rainbow fabric rippling in the air above. The moment was so strong, nearly reverent, that the following set closer arrived as a foregone afterthought.

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is so ubiquitous, so universal, that Lauper often finds new ways to perform it. On Tuesday night, oddly, that meant three giant portraits of the artist Yayoi Kusama, stern and unsmiling, on the giant stage backdrop, and a set and wardrobe bathed in Kusama’s red-and-white polka dots.

Cyndi Lauper hugged Nancy Pelosi. Opener Trixie Mattel came back out to sing the second verse. Confetti ribbons shot into the air. If this truly was the last time San Francisco will see Lauper sing her hits, it left a memorable image.