‘Like a Virgin’ songwriter Billy Steinberg dies at 75

Award-winning US songwriter Billy Steinberg, who wrote several top hit songs, including Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” has died at age 75, according to media reports.

The Jewish Steinberg wrote some of the biggest pop hits of the 1980s and 1990s and was behind songs performed by singers from Whitney Houston and Celine Dion to Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

He died following a battle with cancer, his attorney tells the Los Angeles Times and BBC News.

“Billy Steinberg’s life was a testament to the enduring power of a well-written song — and to the idea that honesty, when set to music, can outlive us all,” his family says in a statement to the outlets.

Steinberg was born in 1950 and grew up in Palm Springs, California, where his family had a table grape business. He attended Bard College in New York and soon began his career in songwriting. He helped write five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 list. Among those was “Like a Virgin,” co-written with Tom Kelly, which spent six consecutive weeks at the top of the charts.

Steinberg won a Grammy Award in 1997 for his work on Celine Dion’s “Falling Into You.”

He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011.