Money Changes Everything

A track from Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual, "Money Changes Everything" was written by Tom Gray, who first recorded it with his Atlanta Rock band The Brains. The song got a great audience reaction when The Brains performed it at live shows in 1979, and when they earned some cash opening shows for The B-52s, they recorded the song and pressed 1,000 copies on their own label. Progressive FM stations in Boston, San Francisco and a few places in between started playing the song, which earned the band a record deal with Mercury Records. But then money changed everything: Mercury cleaned house and the executives that were behind the band were replaced with folks who knew nothing about them. The song was released on The Brains 1980 self-titled debut album, but without record company support, it got little attention despite being produced by Steve Lillywhite, who would later have enormous success working with U2. Soon after, Tom Gray got a publishing deal with ATV, which pitched "Money Changes Everything" to the producer Rick Chertoff, hoping he would record it with a teenage singer he worked with named Rachel Sweet. Chertoff declined, but a few months later he included the song on a demo reel for a new artist he was working with: a brash young singer named Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi loved the song and recorded it for her album, turning it into a hit and improving Gray's financial fortunes considerably.

The song is about a girl who leaves her man for someone with a more robust bank account. Many songs have been written about how money can't buy love, but this one takes the opposite tack, explaining that sometimes money trumps love. Lauper didn't change the gender of the song - the original version sung by a man places him in the lead role, but with Lauper singing, she is recounting a story.

Tom Gray wasn't going for social commentary when he wrote this song; he got the idea after having a conversation with his landlady. In our interview with Gray, he explained: "We were just sort of gossiping about this couple we knew, and she said, 'She's going to leave him as soon as she finds somebody with money.' And I said, 'Wait a minute, excuse me.' The idea of the song just appeared in my head right there. The keyboard part was something I'd been banging on the piano for a week or so. But I wrote the chorus very quickly and then the verses followed. The song was finished within a day or two."