For Cyndi Lauperfame wasn’t much fun.

The star opened up about the harmful consequences of her early success in a Nov. 14 interview with Vulture. The music superstar, 71, looked back on her career and shared that she had a “tough time” releasing her debut album, She is so unusual, was released in 1983.

“I used to walk, listen, sit, write and walk some more,” she said. “But once I got famous and tried to walk on my own, people followed me. One time a car stopped right in front of me and all these people got out of the car. Luckily, they just wanted autographs, but that kind of thing scared the hell out of me.

“I found myself taking out all the things I collected and loved and hiding them,” she said. “I had all these feelings exploding in color, and all of a sudden it was like, suck it up, bitch, you can’t go anywhere.”

She also noted, “When I first hit, people took everything I wore – the color, the style, etc. – then spat it out and moved on to the next one. » She remembered watching a documentary on Steve Martin in which he describes a similar phenomenon: it took him a long time to hone his comic sensibilities, but once he joined Saturday evening liveeveryone copied it. “All of a sudden the culture sucked it up, spit it out and moved on to the next person. That’s what I felt,” she said.

Lauper also said: “She is so unusual shocked and scared everyone. They looked at me and were like, What the hell? As a former art student, she said, she had her makeup artist do her makeup like “war paint” and she deeply loved “color” and “vintage.”

“Then I wanted to do crazier things, and people were like, ‘Oh, that’s just weird,’” she said. “It just made me want to do more.” Let’s go. Let’s do this.

Lauper was 30 when She is so unusual was released; Before that, she had spent years trying to make it in the industry. The album became a huge success, thanks in part to the singles “Girls just want to have fun” and “Time After Time” and won Lauper two Grammys.

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In October, Lauper opened up to PEOPLE on aging and his farewell tour. “It really sucks,” she said of aging. “As in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, you could even say it blows!”

The key to not feeling old, she says, is to “take care of yourself.” “That’s the main thing. I try to force myself to do something: cycling, walking, weights, yoga. Yoga is great because it puts you in a zone mentally. But who wants to get old and get decrepit? Nobody! But the trick, I guess, is not to get too decrepit.”

But the Tony winner said she tries not to get too carried away with her previous accomplishments, either. “It seems like a million years ago,” she said of her early career. “I have never tried to live in the past because I know that everything changes in the world and in your life. There are so many different chapters that not being able to open a new one is criminal.”