<\/p>\n
Billy Steinberg, who wrote the lyrics to some of the biggest pop hits of the 1980s \u2014 including Madonna\u2019s \u201cLike a Virgin,\u201d Cyndi Lauper\u2019s \u201cTrue Colors\u201d and Heart\u2019s \u201cAlone\u201d \u2014 died Monday at his home in Brentwood. He was 74.<\/p>\n
His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Laurie Soriano, who said the cause was cancer.<\/p>\n
A Palm Springs native who grew up working for his father\u2019s table grape business, Steinberg got into music first as a performer with the groups Billy Thermal and i-Ten, the latter of which he formed with a fellow songwriter, Tom Kelly. Together the duo wrote \u201cLike a Virgin,\u201d which spent six weeks atop Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 in late 1984 and early 1985.<\/p>\n
With Kelly, Steinberg scored four more No. 1s on the Hot 100: \u201cTrue Colors,\u201d Whitney Houston\u2019s \u201cSo Emotional,\u201d the Bangles\u2019 \u201cEternal Flame\u201d and \u201cAlone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinberg\u2019s other hits include the Pretenders\u2019 \u201cI\u2019ll Stand by You,\u201d the Divinyls\u2019 \u201cI Touch Myself\u201d and \u201cI Drove All Night,\u201d which was recorded by both Lauper and Roy Orbison.<\/p>\n
Steinberg won a Grammy Award in 1997 for his work on Celine Dion\u2019s \u201cFalling Into You,\u201d which was named album of the year. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011. His survivors include his wife, Trina, and his sons Ezra and Max.<\/p>\n
This obituary will be updated<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Billy Steinberg, who wrote the lyrics to some of the biggest pop hits of the 1980s \u2014 including Madonna\u2019s \u201cLike a Virgin,\u201d Cyndi Lauper\u2019s \u201cTrue Colors\u201d and Heart\u2019s \u201cAlone\u201d \u2014 died Monday at his home in Brentwood. He was 74. His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Laurie Soriano, who said the cause was cancer. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2284635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2284634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Like-a-Virgin-songwriter-Billy-Steinberg-dies-at-74.com2F4f2F712Fba8f5dee4dc39fd4b1e2edd3.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2284634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2284636,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284634\/revisions\/2284636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2284635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2284634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2284634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2284634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}