Cynthia Lauper was born in 1953 in New York in a Swiss family. From early childhood she liked to dress in eccentric clothing and many coloured hair styles. Her classmates were throwing stones at her because of that. She was thirty when she released her first album, but her distinctive voice sounds like a little girl. Also on this single, the first coming out of her second album with the same name.
True colors was written by American songwriter Billy Steinberg for his mother. It has become a signature song of the gay community, says the wiki page. Since I’m not part of the scene, I am a bit careful with that assumption, and I get the feeling it is rather American. There is however a True Colors Fund, dedicated to fight LGBT homelessness.