SOTD #124 // Scary Mansion: ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’

New York’s Scary Mansion have been somewhat quiet of late. After setting foot on UK shores at the beginning of 2010 in support of their second long player Make Me Cry, they retreated back to the metropolis and left us longing for more.

While on hiatus, singer and guitarist Leah Hayes is branching out with two other musical projects; Brooklyn electro-pop collective Lindbergh Palace and Little Horns, a collaboration with her sister Vanessa Hayes.

So to whet our musical appetite for what might come next, there is this recently dropped diamond: an achingly soulful cover of Cyndi Lauper’s feelgood ode to sorority ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’.

In the hands of the Scary Mansion folks, the coming-of-age metaphor and paternal-reassuring tones take on a more sinister meaning. When Hayes sings “some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world” – her tissue-paper thin vocal fragility set against a beautifully morose organ line and that slowed-down chug of a beat – it elicits an image of entrapment, desperation, even criminal withholding. It makes the subsequent line “I wanna be the one to walk in the sun” so much more poignant and defiant.

Scary Mansion: ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’