Synopsis

Cyndi Lauper performs the song on a dark soundstage beside a drum, while a young girl wanders through a dreamlike coastal landscape. A black flower leads her toward a boat where two women share tea. Lauper appears in several striking tableaux, including an ornate headdress, a flowing white sheet with a long-haired man, and a newspaper skirt worn as she passes schoolchildren. The surreal images resolve with Lauper beside a pool of water, echoing the album artwork, before the video returns to its opening drum motif.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed in Queens, New York, a borough closely associated with Lauper's upbringing and identity.

• Catrine Dominique appears as the girl in the video, while David Wolff appears opposite Lauper in the white-sheet sequence.

• The production received heavy rotation on MTV during the song's 1986 release period.

• The final pool-of-water image deliberately recalls the cover artwork for the *True Colors* album.

• "True Colors" was released as the first single from Lauper's second studio album on August 15, 1986. The song later spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

• The song's writers, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, originally developed it as a personal ballad inspired by Steinberg's mother. Lauper's sparse, emotionally exposed arrangement helped turn it into her signature ballad.