Lauper bops into a whole new groove.

Byline: Carolyn Lamberson The Register-Guard

You'd think Cyndi Lauper would be tired.

Her day started at dawn and she stayed busy throughout, doing promotional work and posing for photographs before performing in concert. It's midnight in Sydney, Australia, and Lauper is on the phone, ready to chat with another reporter.

See, just in case we thought the 51-year-old Lauper has slowed down, that she has quieted the bubbly, buoyant personality that lit up MTV 20 years ago, we're about to be educated.

Let's put it this way. It takes only one question to get Lauper started: So how are things going in Australia?

Twenty minutes later, we start on Question No. 2.

`It was a long day, darling,' she said. `I still care. I can't help it. It's actually been kind of great. The work has been inspiring.

`When you do stuff that's inspiring and you work long hours, it doesn't seem that long.'

Cyndi does the Songbook

Lauper, on tour promoting `At Last,' her recent CD that pulls music from the Great American Songbook, will perform tonight at the Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall to open the Oregon Festival of American Music's 2004-05 Now Hear This series.

The album, released last fall, might come as a revelation for folks who haven't heard much from Lauper since her debut `She's So Unusual' hit it big in 1984.

`She's So Unusual' - which sold 5 million copies, earned Lauper a Grammy for best new artist and made her the first artist to have five Top 10 singles from a debut album - introduced to the world a singer with a powerful (if girlish) voice, rainbow-colored hair, a fondness for professional wrestlers and a flamboyant fashion sense.

But from its opening note, `At Last' presents a more mature Lauper. The title track, an Etta James tune, is a powerful, gospel-tinged statement from a vocalist in full command of her instrument.

It might make some of her older fans stop and think: `Wow, this is Cyndi Lauper?' It's the kind of vocal performance hinted at in her two most successful pop ballads: `Time After Time' and, especially, `True Colors.'

`At Last' features covers of songs by an eclectic range of performers, from Edith Piaf (`La Vie en Rose') to Louie Armstrong (`Sunny Side of the Street') to the Animals (`Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood'). The only common thread: They are the songs of Lauper's youth.

`It's music from the '50s and '60s,' she said. `That was the music being played when I was growing up.'

She herself was into the Beatles, the Supremes, Janis Joplin, the Four Tops, that stuff - `One of the first songs I learned was `House of the Rising Son.' ' But all around her Queens, N.Y., neighborhood, people were listening to Tony Bennett, Piaf, the Righteous Brothers, Smokey Robinson and the rest.

`Their music just came spilling out,' she said. `You'd have your barbecue and everyone had their music that they would play.'

Her Latin-flavored version of Maurice Williams' `Stay' was partially inspired by the search for music to play at her birthday party. She'd gone to the CD store and pulled out the Latin lounge discs.

`And I started to listen to them. My God, they had everything. They had `Babalu' (by Desi Arnaz). ... They had `Cafe' by Eddie Palmieri. They had all these songs, and I was listening to it a lot."

When she and producer Russ Titelman went in the studio to work on `At Last,' things at first were kind of heavy - lots of slow ballads. `I said `This sounds like `Girls Just Want to Cry.' And unless we're packing tissues with the album, that's not good.' '

So they started looking for happy songs. Titelman started playing `Stay.' Lauper still was in a Latin mood. Percussionist Sheila E. was in the studio that day, and after rounding up some instruments, she and Lauper helped bring a Latin feel to the song.

"In the end, it worked out for us," Lauper said.

Her version of `Stay' also reminds Lauper of the times when she was younger and her family would visit relatives on Long Island.

Her aunt would put on her Latin music in the living room and teach them the cha-cha. Her cousin would go off to her bedroom and play her music.

"And if you stood in the middle, that's what `Stay' sounds like. I really hear music through through their eyes and ears and through our experiences together.'

Don't call her a crooner

The Great American Songbook - that loose collection of American pop standards - has been a fertile feeding ground for pop singers in recent years. Harry Connick Jr. has dipped into it throughout his career. Rod Stewart, k.d. lang and Barbra Streisand all have mined the classics for new recordings.

The `At Last" album cover - featuring Lauper looking 1940s chic in a black gown, black gloves and long, blond hair - might have fans thinking that tonight's show will be all ballads and torch songs.

They'd be wrong, Lauper said. Fans can expect a rock 'n' roll show with a mixture of old and new.

`And unlike k.d. and Rod, I don't put a tuxedo on and come out and croon. Because I don't croon.' Crooning, she joked, would require much too large a dose of Prozac.

While she still embraces her older hits, she's not interested in doing rote repetition of the same songs in the same old way. While on her recent Australian tour, she was asked to appear on a Melbourne TV show. And while Lauper managed to talk them into also letting her do `Stay,' what they really wanted he to do was lip sync her biggest hit.

`They wanted to hear the original track of `Girls Just Want to Have Fun,' which makes you feel like a propped-up loser singing something that's that old,' she said. So with a little computer wizardry, she was able to dub the original album vocal track of `Girls' over a brand-new instrumental track, thus satisfying her need to shake things up and giving the show's producers what they wanted to hear.

As she's on the road these days, she's noticed that her audience is all over the map.

`Oh my god, there were so many young people out there,' she said. `All over the place in Australia and America and Japan, it's the same thing. It's a very broad channel of people who listen."

She sees the people who were teens in the mid-'80s - now in their 30s - coming to the shows, and bringing their children. She sees today's teens.

"And every once in a while,' she said, `you see grandma."

Carolyn Lamberson can be reached at 338-2341 or [e-mail].

WHAT SHE'S SINGING

The setlist from Cyndi Lauper's concert on Saturday in Twin Towns on Australia's Gold Coast, her last show down under before returning to the states with a Thursday date in the Saratoga, Calif.

1: `At Last'

2: `Shine'

3: `Change of Heart'

4: `Stay'

5: `Eventually'

6: `Walk on By' (rock version)

7: `Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood'

8: `She Bop' (French version)

9: `Iko Iko' (by request)

10: `Sisters of Avalon'

11: `All Through the Night'

12: `True Colors'

13: `The Goonies 'R' Good Enough' (a cappella)

14: `It's Hard To Be Me'

15: `Money Changes Everything'

Encore: `Hymn to Love'

Encore: `Time After Time'

Encore: `Girls Just Want to Have Fun'

CONCERT PREVIEW

Cyndi Lauper

When: 7:30 p.m. today

Where: Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street

Tickets: $24 to $42, through the Hult Center ticket office, 682-5000

Information: 687-6526 or www.ofam.org

CAPTION(S):

The cover art from Lauper's new album shows the former pop-punk princess decked out in evening gown and formal gloves - and up to waist in the waters that surround the Manhattan skyline.