After a brief stint fronting a little-heard New York new wave band, Cyndi Lauper exploded into the national consciousness like a multicolored glitter bomb at the dawn of the MTV era. The Queens native scored four Top 5 hits from 1983's She's So Unusual and maintained that success through the rest of the decade. Rather than fade into the nostalgia circuit, Lauper continued making varied and inventive records, dabbled in acting, and became a noted LGBT advocate. In 2013, she became the first woman to win a Tony for Best Original Score for her adaptation of the film Kinky Boots.