Cyndi Lauper Clarifies: No Feud with Madonna, “I’ve Loved Her Since ‘Like a Prayer.'” .Linh

1983 was a very good year for pop music — and made-up pop feuds.

In July of 1983, Madonna released The First Album, featuring her hits “Holiday,” “Dress You Up” and “Borderline.” A few months later, in October, Cyndi Lauper released her debut album, She’s So Unusual, which included iconic cuts like “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “She-Bop” and “Time After Time.”

Both women had big, quirky personalities, a creative thrift store-punk aesthetic, and infectiously fun radio hits. So Lauper, now 71, says it was no surprise to her that the industry tried to pit them women against each other and make it seem like they were enemies.

“In the ’80s, they started to pit women against each other,” she tells PEOPLE. “Well, actually, it started in the ’60s, the pitting of women against each other and wanting them to go back to what they’d been doing before women’s lib or whatever,” she says.

But the Madonna beef, she says, was simply made up.

“As soon as I saw her do ‘Like a Prayer,’ I was like, ‘Oh my God. Ah, I love her!’ And I’ve loved her ever since,” Lauper says.

In an interview with The Guardian over the summer, Lauper talked more about the fictional feud.

“As if you could only have one woman who is successful. What the hell is that about?” she said.

“That woman’s [Madonna, 66] been entertaining us for years. She’s made great pop songs. I want to be competitive, but not pitted against another woman. I’m not into that,” Lauper added at the time.

The Grammy winner is currently gearing up to kick off her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour and opened up to PEOPLE in this week’s issue about things she’d learned throughout her 42 years in the music business. She notes that despite looking like a wild child, she wasn’t actually wild at all, and hardly drank.

“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. It’s very boring,” she says. “But because I was a singer, I had to watch out for my voice.”

She says she never had a need for drugs or escapism. “When you’re singing, if it’s all working out, that takes you to another planet anyway.”