Cyndi Lauper had to fight to get recognition as a songwriter.
Cyndi Lauper
The 62-year-old singer has explained that when she was starting out it was unusual for a female singer to write their own material and it was a battle for her to be allowed to sing her own songs.
She told Radio Times magazine: "Women who had big voices then did not write. They just sang other people's songs.
"I fought with the producer all the time. And of course, I was like a harridan."
The 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' star said that it was only when Miles Davis wanted to cover 'Time After Time' that she felt she had gained the recognition she deserved.
Cyndi said: "It was like a soothing balm for my heart, after being told over and over, 'You're not good enough.'"
Cyndi's father left when she was five, and the women in her life fired her ambition to achieve what they never could.
She said: "I watched the women and I noticed their unhappiness because they could never become who they wanted."
Cyndi says her mother won a scholarship to study singing in New York, but her grandparents wouldn't let her go, because she was told only w****s go to school in Manhattan.
As Cyndi sees it, "she was derailed".
Tagged in Cyndi Lauper