The world of wrestling and the world of music have an awful lot in common. You've got you over-the-top characters, the lights, the spectacle, the flashy costumes and choreography. (See this, in fact.) Pretty much the only thing separating them are the injuries, and depending on the rock show not even that.
So it's not surprising that sometimes those worlds overlap, and I don't just mean wrestlers like Chris Jericho turning to music, or bands showing up live to perform the song a wrestler uses as his entrance music like Motorhead did for Triple H. I mean that sometimes the two camps just full-on collide in amazing ways.
Note to ICP fans... They didn't make the cut. Not because they didn't distinguish themselves, but because it could be argued that they did both so well that the two sides pretty much cancel out each other. They're a separate category all their own.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it, the early success the World Wrestling Federation had in meshing itself firmly into the pop culture of the '80s owes a hell of a lot to Cyndi Lauper. She was coming off the success of She's So Unusual, an album that sold 16 million copies worldwide, and was an undeniable phenomenon. Vince McMahon knew a good thing when he saw it, and asked Lauper to be part of his Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection designed to merge the appeal of MTV with his growing wrestling company.
Lauper was amiable. She's gotten to be fast friends with Captain Lou Albano on a plane ride and asked him to appear as her father in the video for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Later, she would aid Wendi Richter in claiming the WWF Women's Title from the Fabulous Moolah with a timely shot to Moolah's head with her Loaded Purse of Doom, and accompanied Richter to the ring at the first Wrestlemania.
During this time she was offered the chance to serve as musical director for Steven Spielberg's The Goonies. This included a new song called "Goonies R Good Enough," for which Lauper shot an ambitious, two-part music video utilizing Goonies sets and cast members. Also on hand for the video was a veritable who's who of wrestling's top stars. Roddy Piper, the Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, Classy Freddie Blassie, and Andre the Giant all played major roles in the hilarious short musical film, in addition to folks like Albano and Moolah, with whom Lauper had worked before.
By the time all was said and done, WWF had its foot firmly rooted as an '80s entertainment mainstay, with a lot of help from Lauper in breaking into the mainstream.
