Billy Steinberg | |
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Birth name | William Endfield Steinberg |
Born | February 26, 1950 |
Occupations |
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William Endfield Steinberg (born February 26, 1950) is an American songwriter. He achieved his greatest success in the 1980s with songwriting partner Tom Kelly; together they wrote or co-wrote the No. 1 hits "Like a Virgin" by Madonna (1984), "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper (1986), "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles (1989), "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston (1987), and "Alone" (covered by Heart in 1987). They also wrote or co-wrote the hit songs "I Drove All Night" (recorded by various artists, initially recorded by Roy Orbison in 1987 but first released by Cyndi Lauper in 1989), "I Touch Myself" by Divinyls (1990), and "I'll Stand by You" by The Pretenders (1994).
After Kelly retired from music in the 1990s, Steinberg collaborated with other songwriters. With Rick Nowels and Marie-Claire D'Ubaldo he wrote the hit songs "Falling Into You" (covered by Celine Dion) and "One & One". He has written hit songs with Josh Alexander including "All About Us" by t.A.T.u. (2005), "Too Little Too Late" by JoJo (2006), "Over It" by Katharine McPhee (2007), and "Give Your Heart a Break" by Demi Lovato (2012).
Steinberg grew up in Fresno, California and moved to Palm Springs, California when he was 12 where he worked in his father's table grape operation. He attended Cate School in California, and Bard College in New York. Steinberg is Jewish. [1]
In his mid-20s, he formed the group Billy Thermal, which eventually was signed to Richard Perry's Planet Records.
Their breakthrough occurred in 1980 when Linda Ronstadt heard their album and decided to record their song "How Do I Make You?" for her 1980 Mad Love album. The album hit the top three of the charts and went platinum, and Ronstadt's version of their song reached the American top 10.
Pat Benatar, on her 1980 album Crimes of Passion , covered another Billy Thermal song, "I'm Gonna Follow You". In 1981, Steinberg wrote "Precious Time", which became the title track for Benatar's album Precious Time . Also that year, Steinberg began writing with Tom Kelly, who had written another song ("Fire and Ice") on the album for Benatar.
Further success followed with the song "Like a Virgin", when it was played for Warner Bros. executives who thought it would be perfect for Madonna. Steinberg later recalled writing the lyric in 1983 following a failed relationship, stating that he had genuinely felt that he'd "made it through the wilderness" and that he was "beat, incomplete". Madonna's version of the song spent six weeks at number one in the United States in 1984 and became a worldwide hit. It was also the title track for her number one album.
The success of the partnership continued with more number one singles, "True Colors" (recorded by Cyndi Lauper), "So Emotional" (by Whitney Houston), "Eternal Flame" (by the Bangles) and "Alone" (by Heart).
Their other hits include "In Your Room" (the Bangles), 'Spirit of Love' (by Laura Branigan), "I Drove All Night" (recorded by Roy Orbison, Cyndi Lauper and Celine Dion), "I Touch Myself" (Divinyls), "Sex as a Weapon" (by Pat Benatar), and "Look Me in the Heart" (by Tina Turner). They also wrote several songs with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, including the top-10 single "I'll Stand By You". Artists such as REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Bette Midler, Belinda Carlisle, and Taylor Dayne (on her multi-platinum debut album Tell It to My Heart) also recorded their songs.
In the mid-1990s, Steinberg began writing with Rick Nowels, who had established himself as a songwriter for artists such as Stevie Nicks and Belinda Carlisle. Their greatest success of the period was the Celine Dion recording of "Falling into You". In 1997, Steinberg co-wrote the track "One & One" with Rick Nowels and Marie-Claire D'Ubaldo for Edyta Górniak, and this song became a hit in Europe and Asia; Edyta became the first Polish singer on the Music & Media's European Radio Top 50 airplay chart. Between 1997 and 1999, he has written songs for Melanie C on her debut album Northern Star as well as the Corrs' second album Talk On Corners .
In 2005, Steinberg collaborated with producer Josh Alexander and Jessica and Lisa Origliasso of the Veronicas to write several tracks for the Veronicas' debut release, The Secret Life Of... , including the third single, "When It All Falls Apart". Steinberg and Alexander also wrote "All About Us", a hit for the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. They wrote JoJo's 2006 single "Too Little Too Late" and Leigh Nash's "Nervous in the Light of Dawn" and "My Idea of Heaven", and Katharine McPhee's "Over It" in 2007. In 2008, Steinberg and Alexander wrote "Fly on the Wall" for t.A.T.u.'s album Happy Smiles . He wrote songs with Alexander on JoJo's scrapped album All I Want Is Everything.
With Alexander and Porcelain Black, he wrote the track "How Do You Love Someone?" for Ashley Tisdale's 2009 album Guilty Pleasure . [2] In 2010, Steinberg and Alexander wrote "What Happened to Us" for Australian singer Jessica Mauboy for her album Get 'Em Girls . With Alexander and Toby Gad, he wrote the 2011 song "Don't Hold Your Breath" for Nicole Scherzinger, and with Alexander and Rivers Cuomo he wrote the 2011 song "High Maintenance" for Miranda Cosgrove. Steinberg and Alexander also wrote and produced the hit song "Give Your Heart a Break" by Demi Lovato. He wrote the 2016 song "My Stupid Heart" for Tini Stoessel.
Steinberg performs an acoustic version of "I Touch Myself" in an on camera interview in the documentary film Sticky: A (Self) Love Story . [3] [4]
Steinberg was awarded a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 2008. [5]
Steinberg and Kelly were inducted as a team into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011. [6]
True Colors is the second studio album by American singer Cyndi Lauper, released on September 15, 1986, by Portrait Records. The album spawned several commercially successful singles as "True Colors", "Change of Heart", and "What's Going On" reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100, with the first two charting within the top five. The album was produced by Lauper herself together with Lennie Petze.
"I Drove All Night" is a song written and composed by American songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly and originally intended for Roy Orbison. Orbison recorded the song in 1987, the year before his death, but his version was not released until 1992. Cyndi Lauper recorded the song and released it as a single for her A Night to Remember album. Her version became a top 10 hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 1989 and was also her final top 40 hit on the American pop charts. Lauper still regularly performs the song in her live concerts. The song has also been covered by Canadian singer Celine Dion, whose version topped the Canadian Singles Chart and reached number 7 on the US Adult Contemporary chart in 2003.
The 41st Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 24, 1999, at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the year 1998. Lauryn Hill received the most nominations with 10, setting a record for the most nominations for female artist in one night. During the ceremony, Hill became the first woman to receive 5 Grammy Awards in a single night, and the first woman rapper to take home Best New Artist. Her album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill became the first hip hop album to win the award for Album of the Year. Hill's Grammys sweep is widely considered as one of the biggest moments in hip hop history.
Diane Eve Warren is an American songwriter. She has won an Academy Honorary Award, Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and three consecutive Billboard Music Awards for Songwriter of the Year from 1997 to 1999. She first gained recognition for her work on DeBarge's 1985 single "Rhythm of the Night". By the late 1980s, she joined the record label EMI, where she became the first songwriter in the history of Billboard magazine to have written seven hit songs, each recorded by different artists, prompting EMI's UK Chairman Peter Reichardt to call her "the most important songwriter in the world".
Richard Wright Nowels Jr. is an American songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger. He has co-written and co-produced over 90 hit singles with multiple artists and albums his songs have appeared on have sold over 250 million copies. In 2020, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Jules Mark Shear is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He wrote the Cyndi Lauper hit single "All Through the Night", the Bangles' hit "If She Knew What She Wants", and the Ignatius Jones and Allison Moyet hit "Whispering Your Name" and charted a hit as a performer with "Steady" in 1985.
Thomas F. Kelly is an American musician. With Billy Steinberg he co-wrote numerous hit songs for popular music artists, including five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the 1980s.
Edyta Anna Górniak is a Polish pop singer. Górniak started as a musical theatre actress in 1990. She performed in the most popular musical in Polish history, the Tony Award-nominated Metro. Some of its shows took place on Broadway. Górniak was Poland's first representative in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 with the song "To nie ja". She placed second which still remains the country's best result at the competition. This started her decades-long career as a pop singer in her native country and internationally. She is also known for her 1997 single "One and One". She is the recipient of the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis for her contributions to the arts.
VH1 hosted the first annual VH1 Divas concert in 1998. VH1 Divas Live was created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation and subsequent concerts in the series have also benefited that foundation. The VH1 Divas concerts were a follow-up to the channel's annual VH1 Honors benefit concert that ran from 1994 to 1997, airing annually from 1998 to 2004. After a five-year hiatus, the series returned in 2009 with a younger-skewed revamp. In 2010 the concert saluted the troops and in 2011 it celebrated soul music, doubling the previous year's ratings. After a dance music-focused 2012 edition aired live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on December 16, 2012, the show took another hiatus before being revived on December 5, 2016, at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York with a holiday theme and achieved its highest ratings in over a decade.
Terence Ernest Britten is an English-Australian singer-songwriter and record producer, who has written songs for Tina Turner, Cliff Richard, Olivia Newton-John, Status Quo and Michael Jackson amongst many others. Britten won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1985 for "What's Love Got to Do with It".
"Change of Heart" is a song by American singer and songwriter Cyndi Lauper, released on November 11, 1986 as the second single from her second album, True Colors (1986). It went gold in the US, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was written by singer-songwriter Essra Mohawk. Popular remixes by Shep Pettibone were also released. A music video was produced for the song, filmed in Trafalgar Square in London. It features Lauper and her tour band performing the song in front of a large group of people. The Bangles sang background vocals on the original recording. A live version of the song was released on Lauper's live album/DVD, To Memphis, with Love.
"If She Knew What She Wants" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Jules Shear and introduced on his 1985 album The Eternal Return. The Bangles recorded the song for their 1986 album Different Light. That version, a call-and-response rendition with Susanna Hoffs as the main voice, was issued as a single and became a Top 40 hit. A mid-tempo ballad, it is sung from the viewpoint of someone, per songwriter Shear, "who wants to satisfy someone else but doesn't quite know how to do it because the other person is capricious." The song, especially The Bangles' version, is typically described with such adjectives as "bittersweet", "plaintive" and "wistful".
"Just Have a Heart" is a song by American R&B singer Angela Clemmons from her second studio album, This Is Love (1987). It was written by Aldo Nova, Billy Steinberg and Ralph McCarthy, and produced by Nova. Canadian singer Celine Dion recorded a French-language version of the song, "Partout je te vois" for her 1987 album, Incognito. In 1990, Dion covered the English version for her first English-language album, Unison, and titled it "Have a Heart".
"Falling into You" is a song by Argentine singer Marie-Claire D'Ubaldo from her 1994 album, Marie-Claire D'Ubaldo. The Spanish-language version, "Y Caigo Un Poco Mas", was also released in 1994, on her album Alma de Barro. In 1996, the song was covered by Canadian singer Celine Dion, and released as the first single from her 1996 album, Falling into You.
Marie Claire D'Ubaldo is an Argentine singer / musician and a prolific songwriter; she has appeared as a guest vocalist on many albums. She had her biggest success with "Falling Into You" which was covered by Celine Dion, who also named her album after the single. Dion's album has sold well in excess of 30 million albums worldwide.
Anthony "Tony" Moran is a DJ, record producer, remixer, singer and songwriter known for remixing popular songs. In 2007, he hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart twice with "Walk Away" featuring Kristine W and "Keep Your Body Working" featuring Martha Wash. Moran also has a total of seven number one hits on the Billboard Dance Club Songs music charts in the United States and he has recently had four number one Billboard chart hits in the years 2016 and 2017.
Satisfied is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Dayne. It includes the single, "Beautiful" which went to Number 1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Charts in April 2008. "Crash" was used in a promotional commercial for the ABC network. This is Dayne's first album in ten years as well as her latest album to date.
Peer Åström is a Swedish composer, lyricist, musician, and record producer and partner. He has collaborated with artists such as Madonna, Celine Dion, Enrique Iglesias, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez, contributing to a staggering 125 albums with 520 performers. Notably, he was involved in the popular TV series Glee, earning two #1 Billboard singles, eight #1 iTunes singles, and 4 Grammy nominations. In film and TV scoring, his notable projects include the musical Journey to Bethlehem, American Horror Story, the Fox TV series Monarch, the Nickelodeon show Kally's Mashup, and the movie The Prom. Åström's earlier works include the DreamWorks Animation Film Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie and scoring for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Additionally, he co-scored and co-produced The Passion: New Orleans.
"Blessed" is an English language hit single by Lebanese-German singer Fady Maalouf. Maalouf was a contestant in 2008 of Deutschland sucht den Superstar, the German version of Pop Idol. He sang the song for the first time on 17 May 2008 in the finals of the said competition as the "winner's song" in case he won the competition. He eventually came second to winner Thomas Godoj. "Blessed" also appears in Fady Maalouf's debut album also entitled Blessed.
Lace Around the Wound is the second studio album by the American singer, actress and musician E. G. Daily, released by A&M in 1989.