5 Songs You May Not Know Cyndi Lauper Wrote

American singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper is famous for hits like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” “Time After Time,” and “True Colors.” However, what is perhaps less well known is the fact that Lauper has also co-written a number of successful songs for other artists, as well as for stage and screen. This is in addition to having her work covered or sampled by others, tracks for which she has therefore received writing credits, too.

Here are five songs you didn’t know were written, wholly or partially, by Lauper.

“Code of Silence” // Billy Joel ft. Cyndi Lauper (1986)
“Unconditional Love” // Susanna Hoffs (1989)
“Inseparable” // Mariah Carey (2009)
“Hero Is My Middle Name” // Ethan Slater, Danny Skinner, Lilli Cooper (2016)
“Secret to the Formula” // Sponge On The Run Cast (2020)

“Code of Silence” // Billy Joel ft. Cyndi Lauper (1986)

Billy Joel is renowned for having written the vast majority of his songs on his own, without any co-writers. However, one of the only two songs he wrote with another person happened to be with Lauper, who collaborated with him on the track “Code of Silence,” which appears on his album The Bridge, released in July 1986.

Lauper also performed backing vocals on the song. Joel would gave huge credit for the song to her, stating in an interview: “She did all the work.”

“Unconditional Love” // Susanna Hoffs (1989)

When Susanna Hoffs, the lead vocalist of The Bangles, released her debut solo album When You’re a Boy in 1991, one of the tracks released as a single was a song called “Unconditional Love.” This would become a hit for her, but it was actually a cover version of a track co-written by Lauper, Billy Steinberg, and Tom Kelly for Lauper’s album A Night to Remember in 1989.

Lauper’s version was initially just an album track and had not been released as a single at the time, but following the success of Hoffs’s version, it did get a single release in Hong Kong.

“Inseparable” // Mariah Carey (2009)

Writing credits on a song can be accumulated in various ways. If a sample from another song is integrated into a new composition, the original artist often gets a songwriting credit. This was the case with Mariah Carey’s “Inseparable” (2009), which utilizes some of Lauper’s work on “Time After Time.”

The writing credits of the song, which appears on Carey’s album Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, would ultimately be attributed to Carey, Terius Nash, Christopher Stewart, Rob Hyman, and Lauper. “Inseparable” is not the only song to sample Lauper’s “Time after Time”: it has been estimated that as many as 52 songs have also made use of her track.

“Hero Is My Middle Name” // Ethan Slater, Danny Skinner, Lilli Cooper (2016)

Lauper would later write a song for a very different purpose when she worked on music for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, a stage musical based on the animated titular character. Lauper was one of a number of artists recruited to write music for the stage show; others included Sara Bareilles, The Flaming Lips, and John Legend.

The musical was a success and would later transfer to Broadway. Lauper’s song “Hero Is My Middle Name ”was co-written with her frequent collaborator, Rob Hyman.

“Secret to the Formula” // Sponge On The Run Cast (2020)

Following the success of the Broadway musical, a film version of the SpongeBob story went into production, and those involved asked Lauper and Hyman to write a new song for the movie, SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.

This song would be called “Secret to the Formula,” an affirmative track where the solution to the secret of the title is answered with the lyrics: “The secret to the formula is you.” The song is also performed during an important scene in the film.