The man whose bad break-up gave Madonna her breakthrough hit Like A Virgin [songwriter Billy Steinberg]

BBC ^ | February 17, 2026 | Harry Sekulich and Ian Youngs

[SunkenCiv]

Grammy-winning US songwriter Billy Steinberg, a key figure behind a string of chart-topping hits including Madonna's Like a Virgin, has died at the age of 75.

Steinberg's family described him as a "visionary lyricist, devoted husband, loving father, and one of the most influential songwriters of his era".

With Tom Kelly, he also wrote classic 1980s and 90s songs like Cyndi Lauper's True Colors, Whitney Houston's So Emotional, The Bangles' Eternal Flame, Lauper and Roy Orbison's I Drove All Night, and the Pretenders' I'll Stand By You.

---

TOPICS: Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: billysteinberg

[SunkenCiv]

[snip] Now, I want to get on to we just lost one of our greatest songwriters. It's been a couple of tough weeks in the industry. Brad Arnold from Three Doors Down passed away from cancer. We lost Chuck Negron from Three Dog Night. And then we just lost Billy Steinberg. Um, one of the greatest American songwriters. You may not remember the name, but you know the hits. He had five number one hits and he wrote them all for females. He co-wrote them with Tom Kelly: "So Emotional" for Whitney Houston, "Alone" by Heart, one of Heart's best songs, "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper, "Eternal Flame" for the Bangles, and "Like a Virgin" for Madonna. And he did a bunch of other stuff: "Touch Myself" for Divinyls, and "I'll Stand by You" for the Pretenders. And he had such a great story when I got a chance to interview him. Let me know if you want to see that full interview. I can release it over the next couple of days. Um, but he told the story about he wrote "Like a Virgin" for, well, he wrote it and then Madonna recorded it and of course it became a huge number one hit for her and it launched her career and made her who she was. So he never met Madonna and then in 1989 he was going to be at a party where he was going to finally get a chance to meet Madonna. He was really, really excited. Now Billy Steinberg is one of the good guys in music. One of the nicest guys right there with Huey, one of the nicest guys that I've ever interviewed. And his songwriting partner said, "Hey, we're going to get a chance to meet Madonna tonight at this party." His hopes were, you know, he had these hopes up to meet her. Was maybe going to talk to her about, you know, writing another song together. Of course, this is when she was at her peak. So, she walks up and at this time she was dating Warren Beatty. And she walks up to him and he says, "Oh, Madonna, I've looked forward to meeting you. I'm the one that wrote 'Like a Virgin' and I've been looking so forward to meeting you. I'm so excited about this." And she looked at him and said, "Well, you met me." And then she just walked off. She like totally just cut him to the bone and he was crestfallen. And even when he was telling the story in the interview, I could just see the pain in his eyes. I mean, what? I cannot believe the way people act. I mean, this is a guy that made her career. Without "Like a Virgin," it's not the same thing. [/snip]

Professor of Rock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bbb8-Ima6E Streamed live 18 hours ago

[dfwgator]

Sounds like a classy human being. I certainly cannot say that about Madonna. RIP.

[SunkenCiv]

Roy Orbison - I Drove All Night (Lyrics) | 3:53
Young Pilgrim Music | 1.23M subscribers | 296,337 views | June 16, 2020

[1Old Pro]

Well, hopefully he got paid well.

[SunkenCiv]

Wow, the formatting fell out.

[montag813]

Those other songs they didn’t put in the headline are far superior. RIP.

[CaptainK]

Paragraphs are our friends.

[dfwgator]

Wonder how he wrote so many good songs for women.

(Methinks he might have employed the Jack Nicholson ‘As Good As It Gets’ approach)

[SunkenCiv]

sez here, “around $0.15 per”, and it sold six million copies. So, not bad. Looks like “I Touch Myself” may have done pretty well better because of cover versions. Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional” did well also.

[Gay State Conservative]

Bernie McGuirk,Don Imus's radio sidekick,used to refer to her as “a walking yeast infection”.

[SunkenCiv]

Reading the entire topic first is our best friend.

[Hot Tabasco]

Great song, I’ve never heard it before.

[Gay State Conservative]

I used to work in a big city ER. Of course many of our clients just saw us as a 24 hour walk in clinic and thanks to Federal law you can't turn antone away even if their complain is minor. As regular as clockwork we'd get women who have abdominal pain or a similar complaint.

When they were being led into a treatment room I'd often hear one nurse softly say to another after seeing them walk "PID shuffle". PID stands for "pelvic inflammatory disease"...which means gonorrhea/chlamydia!

[SteelPSUGOP]

Like A Virgin is one of Madonna’s most forgettable songs. If she hadn’t used the mic as a dildo on TV, well who knows.

RIP

[SunkenCiv]

Hits, but most of those are awful IMHO.

[SunkenCiv]

Letterman made reference to an incident where Madonna used the Puerto Rican flag as a, uh, anyway... Dave said it was faster than doing Puerto Rican men one at a time.

[SunkenCiv]

I remember seeing a giant display of the album in an independent record store (LPs). Someone mischievously displayed it upside down. That may have been the first time I’d ever heard of her.

https://www.billboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/like-a-virgin-madonna-1984-billboard-1240.jpg?w=1032

[Opinionated Blowhard]

"Everyone looked at us like we were nuts," Steinberg told Songwriters Universe. "Some people even asked us to change the title. . . . . "

Especially when they heard that Madonna was singing it. No one would have believed that worn out old mattress was a virgin even in her early 20s.

[Carriage Hill]

I don’t remember any of those ‘songs’. Guess I’m lucky.