It’s the summer of 1983,and a singer with punkish attitude and outlandish fashion sense releases a debut album of smart,quirky songs. No big deal, right? Except that Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual proved to have staying power. The songs were catchy and well produced enough to get all over the radio—no small feat in the days when programmers were still timid about new wave. You only had to look at Lauper to know she was all about individuality, and the hits were more subversive than they seemed: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”was a feminist anthem disguised as a party song. And once people figured out what it was about, “She Bop” became an anthem of a different sort.

Cyndi Lauper plays the House of Blues on June 30.

Lauper is now celebrating the album’s 30th anniversary (and her 60th birthday, on June 22) with a month-long tour that will feature all ten songs—the above big hits (and the other two, “Time After Time” and“All Through the Night”) plus buried treasures like the smart-alecky “Money Changes Everything” (originally by an Atlanta group, the Brains) and Prince’s“When You Were Mine.” Nostalgic tours can be a last-ditch move but Lauper’s career is doing just fine: Two years ago she reinvented herself as a blues woman, getting heavy weight slike B.B. King and Allen Toussaint to guest on her Memphis Blues album, and carriedthat off at Jazz Fest. And now she’s moving into Broadway, writing songs foran adaptation of Harvey Fierstein’s KinkyBoots. So don’t count this tour as a careerstatement, just one more chance to have fun with a girl who’s always known how.