The Story Behind the Only Song Cyndi Lauper Co-Wrote With Billy Joel and the ‘True Colors’ Track He Ended Up Singing On

“I clean the house, and while I’m cleaning, all this stuff comes to me. I don’t know why.” Cleaning has always inspired Cyndi Lauper to write songs. “Mother used to say to ‘Please clean up the room,’ and then I’d sit and play guitar,” Lauper recalled. “I had the Beatles’ pictures all around, each one on each wall. My teachers used to say you have to draw at least one hour every day.”

Keeping things tidy was a successful practice for Lauper, who co-wrote tracks on her first band, Blue Angel’s 1980 self-titled album, with bandmate John Turi, before penning most of the tracks for her 1983 solo debut, She’s So Unusual, including hits “Time After Time” and “She Bop.”

Lauper continued writing on her 1986 hit album True Colors, follow-up A Night to Remember, and throughout her catalog of 11 albums, while co-writing songs with other artists from the 1980s through the 2010s.

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Of the songs Cyndi Lauper composed for her production of Kinky Boots The Musical with Harvey Weinstein, standouts like “I’m Not My Father’s Son” (featuring Stark Sands) and “Hold Me In Your Heart” were both performed by Billy Porter.

By the 1990s, Lauper helped co-write the ballad “Unconditional Love” for the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs’ 1991 debut solo album, When You’re a Boy. Lauper also co-wrote The Hooters’ 1993 single “Boys Will Be Boys” with band members Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, who worked on She’s So Unusual, and co-wrote Lauper’s hit “Time After Time”—and was featured as a guest vocalist on the track. The Hooters were Lauper’s primary session musicians for She’s So Unusual.

Making her Broadway debut as a songwriter for Kinky Boots, which won a Tony Award for Best Musical Score in 2013, Lauper also wrote the Billy Porter numbers “Hold Me In Your Heart” and “I’m Not My Father’s Son.”

[RELATED: The 1960s Metal Songs Billy Joel Wrote Years Before ‘Cold Spring Harbor’]

Back to the ’80s—and Billy Joel

During her ’80s heyday, Lauper also collaborated with Billy Joel on his tenth album, The Bridge, co-writing the closing track, “Code of Silence,” which concentrated on the struggle of keeping secrets.

Everybody’s got a million questions
Everybody wants to know the score
What you went through it’s something you
It should be over now

Everybody wants to hear the secrets
That you never told a soul before
And it’s not that strange ’cause it wouldn’t change
What happened anyhow

But you swore to yourself a long time ago
There were some things that people never needed to know
Guess there’s one that you keep, that you bury so deep
No one can tear it out

And you can’t talk about it
‘Cause you’re following a code of silence
You’re never gonna to lose the anger
You just deal with it a different way

“She did all the work,” Joel later said of their collaboration. The song marked Jole’s only co-write before his 2024 song “Turn the Lights Back On,” co-written with Freddy Wexler, Arthur Bacon, and Wayne Hector.

“Maybe He’ll Know”

Lauper also covered the “Code of Silence” live on several occasions, and Joel later contributed backing vocals on the track “Maybe He’ll Know,” off her second album, True Colors.

“Maybe He’ll Know” is a remake of a song Lauper originally recorded with Blue Angel

Photo: Ebet Roberts/Redferns