NEW YORK – Cyndi Lauper just wants to have fun this New Year’s Eve – and she expects 500,000 other revelers to join her.
The outlandish songstress will headline this year’s Times Square festivities, singing in the New Year before the famous ball drops.
“Oh, my gosh,” Lauper gushed in her characteristically nasal voice at Tuesday’s announcement. “I’m excited, of course, because all my life I’ve watched that ball go down.”
As Lauper sings, her lyrics will be broadcast on the three-story-high and four-story-wide NBC Astrovision Screen atop One Times Square.
This is the second year for the Panasonic New Year’s Eve Performance and Sing-Along, which turns Times Square into a giant karaoke bar. Last Dec. 31, actor Christopher Reeve spoke to the crowd before revelers sang along to Beatles’ tunes.
“Last year, the crowd energized the performer,” said Justin Camerlengo, executive director of communications for Panasonic. “This year, we wanted to do something even more special. We wanted the performer to energize the crowd.”
Preparations also began Tuesday to ready Times Square for New Year’s Eve – the most significant of which was the unveiling of the 7-foot-tall, 135-light-bulb number “4.”
Lauper blew kisses and breathlessly flung herself against the sparkling, oversized number, which is so heavy that four men were needed to lift it.
Camerlengo said Lauper was selected by the Times Square Business Improvement District and Countdown Entertainment because organizers “wanted someone else to be here who was in love with New York.”
Born at the former Astoria General Hospital, Lauper last visited Times Square on New Year’s Eve back when she was 18.
“I go other places, but I always come back (to New York),” she said. “There’s something about this place. It’s home.”
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AP-NY-12-10-03 1046EST
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