1980s icon stumbled into their biggest hit with a bit of help from the Hooters

The singer hated the song. She refused to even try to sing the tune even though the track was going on her first studio album and she had not yet earned her way to choose what she got to sing and what she wouldn't. Still, there was no way that - as written - she was going to put her stamp of approval on the song that would become her biggest hit ever.

The session guitarist was just there to get paid and to play his licks well. He had made a decent career as a session musician and that helped him maintain the life of his band, the Hooters. The guitarist and his other studio group tried reworking and revamping the song the singer hated but to no avail. There was no changing her mind.

This is when the session guitarist, Eric Bazilian, who was also the frontman of the Hooters, heard Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen" and used that as inspiration to play the opening riff of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" in one last attempt to entice Cyndi Lauper to perform the tune.

How the Hooters' Eric Bazilian helped make Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" a success

According to a recent interview Bazilian did with Guitar World, the feel of "Come On Eileen" and transposing that over to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (which would also be the name of a fairly successful film) was all that was needed to have Lauper be happy with where the biggest hit of her career was going. The song turned out to be a Grammy-nominated track and likely Lauper's most identifiable song.

Bazilian told Guitar World, "(Lauper) hated it (saying) ‘I will never sing that song!' We tried it every which way – rocking it out, doing it ska – but she still hated it. One day, I heard 'Come On Eileen' by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, so I started playing the opening lick of 'Girl…' with that feel...It was like magic. By the end of the day, Cyndi was saying, 'I’ve always wanted to sing that song!' She thought it would be very empowering to women."

Of course, the words needed to be changed a bit too. Lauper felt songwriter Robert Hazard's words were too sexist against females. Ironic that Hazard would write a tune for a female singer and his words would be something the female performer did not want to sing.

As for Bazilian, he would also help co-write songs with lots of artists such as Mick Jagger and he wrote Joan Osborne's "One of Us." He made a decent living as a session musician and even the Hooters would find some chart success in the mid-1980s. Everyone turned out to seemingly be happy, even Robert Hazard who got a songwriting credit for a track that had to be fundamentally changed to be good.

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