Code of Silence
Code of Silence (album)
from *Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Code of Silence is the first (and so far, only) studio album by the duo of Billy Joel and Cyndi Lauper, who collaborated on nine of the album’s ten tracks. [1] It was released on September 14, 1985 and has been certified 5x platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Code of Silence produced six Top 40 hits, with the title track going to #1. [2] The album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 album chart, staying on the charts for 27 weeks. [3] Upon its release,
Code of Silence generally drew positive reviews from music critics, although neither the album nor any of the singles released from it were nominated for any major music awards at either the 1985 or 1986 Grammys.
The
Code of Silence album was arranged to showcase the collaboration between Joel and Lauper. Billy Joel provides the lead vocals on tracks 1, 3, 6, 8, and 10, and Cyndi Lauper sings lead on tracks 2, 4, 7, and 9. The album’s title track, No. 5, is considered a true duet, although Joel’s sections are thirty-two seconds longer than Lauper’s. [4] Each provides background vocals on the other’s lead tracks with the exception of tracks one (“Running on Ice,” a Billy Joel song) and two (“Let’s Go Crazy,” a Cyndi Lauper cover of a song originally written by Prince). “Let’s Go Crazy” was released as a Cyndi Lauper single on November 2, 1985 [5]; “Running On Ice” was released as a Billy Joel single on June 11, 1986.
The two toured in support of the album in 1985 and through the first three months of 1986, after which Billy Joel left. Cyndi Lauper continued to tour, then dubbed the “
Separation” Tour, although both Joel and Lauper have insisted that their relationship was friendly while on tour together. [6]
The album mostly features supporting music from the Billy Joel Band, although
Code of Silence is the only Billy Joel album not to feature Liberty DeVitto on drums. DeVitto was replaced by session drummer Anton Fig, who had collaborated on Lauper’s first album,
She’s So Unusual. [7]
Contents
1. Track Listing
2. Personnel
3. Singles
4. Certifications
5. References
Track Listing
(All songs written by Billy Joel and Cyndi Lauper unless noted otherwise.)
No., Title, Lead Vocals, Length
1. “Running on Ice,” Joel, 3:19
2. “Let’s Go Crazy,” Lauper, 4:31 (orig. by Prince; edited by Joel and Lauper)
3. “A Matter of Trust,” Joel, 4:09
4. “Maybe We’ll Know,” Lauper, 4:28 [8]
5. “Code of Silence,” duet, 5:10
6. “My Kind of Woman,” Joel, 3:55 [9]
7. “When We Were Young,” Lauper, 4:30 [10]
8. “Memories,” Joel, 4:44 [11]
9. “True Colors,” Lauper, 3:50 (orig. by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly)
10. “Answers,” Joel, 4:38 [12]
Personnel
Billy Joel – lead vocals, background vocals, piano, synthesizers, Fender Rhodes piano on “Answers”
Cyndi Lauper – lead vocals, background vocals, various percussion
David Brown – lead guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Russell Javors – guitars
Doug Stegmeyer – bass
Mark Rivera – tenor saxophone
Anton Fig – drums
Steve Winwood – organ, backing vocals on “Answers”
Singles [13]
Year, Single, Chart, Position
1985, “Code of Silence,” Billboard Hot 100, 1
1985, “Let’s Go Crazy,” Billboard Hot 100, 10
1985-86, “A Matter of Trust,” Billboard Hot 100, 8
1986, “My Kind of Woman,” Billboard Hot 100, 27
1986, “When We Were Young,” Billboard Hot 100, 15
1986, “True Colors,” Billboard Hot 100, 2
1986, “Running on Ice,” Billboard Hot 100, 44
1986, “Memories,” Billboard Hot 100, 65
1986, “Answers,” Billboard Hot 100, 78
Certifications
Code of Silence was certified 5x platinum by the RIAA in the United States. It was certified Diamond by Music Canada in Canada, Gold by BPI in the United Kingdom, and 2x platinum by RIAJ in Japan.
References
[1] With all of the focus on heavy metal and hard rock lately, it’s important to remember that a major characteristic of OTL’s 1980s was diversity of musical tastes and styles; that’s even more true ITTL. So while Motley Crue is hitting it big in 1985, there are also going to be millions of radio listeners positively
hate “Welcome to the Jungle,” and those people are going to vote with their ears and dollars for things like Lauper/Joel. (There will also be people like yours truly, who like all of it.)
Also: by this time (1985), even songs that are otherwise ostensibly “identical” to OTL’s – such as “Running on Ice” – are going to have small differences due to butterflies, let alone something significant, such as Billy Joel singing backup vocals for “True Colors.”
Oh, and one more thing: why a collaboration between these two? A lot of reasons. First, they obviously collaborated on OTL’s “Code of Silence” off of Billy Joel’s 1986 album,
The Bridge. Second, you may recall that Joel’s last album,
An Innocent Man, failed to produce a number one single ITTL due to, well, bad luck, basically, so he’s hungry for commercial success. Third, Cyndi Lauper – despite her massive success – reached out to a
bunch of people to help her make OTL’s
True Colors album, including Joel, the Bangles, and Aimee Mann. Fourth, Billy Joel memorably collaborated with Elton John (for a tour only, not an album) IOTL; so again, he’s clearly up for sharing the spotlight. Put it all together and this just seemed right.
[2] This was foreshadowed – with an unfortunate … let’s call it a typo…
way back in post #55, in which I told Brainbin that Billy Joel would have to wait until his next album, where the title track would hit #1. Since that was a non-“official” commentary post, hopefully you’ll forgive the error that I said the album was due out in
1986 rather than 1985.
[3] Note that generally,
Code of Silence is somewhat more successful than both Billy Joel’s
The Bridge and Cyndi Lauper’s
True Colors albums, respectively. Part of that is that Lauper is more successful ITTL (having won the Grammy for Female Artist of the Year, 1984) and this album is coming out a year earlier than
True Colors, so she’s got recency going for her. Part of it is that the songs on the combined album omit a whole lot of fairly mediocre stuff on the two separate albums. And part of it is that Billy Joel and Cyndi Lauper really
do sound good together; go give
OTL’s “Code of Silence” a listen sometime.
[4] IOTL, “Code of Silence” is a straight Billy Joel song, with Lauper on (memorable) background vocals.
[5] This was foreshadowed
way back in post #102.
[6] And, if you scroll all the way back to
post #43, you’ll find that not only did I foreshadow a “
Separation” tour by Cyndi Lauper, but you’ll also learn that she also performs a cover of Boston’s “Amanda.” Given the number of artists who have covered “True Colors,” I figured this was only fair.
[7] IOTL, DeVitto sued Columbia and Billy Joel over unpaid royalties in 2009. The parties settled in 2010.
[8] Essentially, OTL’s “Maybe He’ll Know.”
[9] This is loosely based on OTL’s “Modern Woman.”
[10] Inspired by, but obviously significantly different than, OTL’s “Change of Heart.”
[11] A superior version to OTL’s “This is the Time.”
[12] Similar to OTL’s “Getting Closer.”
[13] OTL’s “True Colors” went to #1 and “Change of Heart” to #3, so their analogues do very slightly worse here, as does TTL’s version of “Modern Woman” (which hit #10 in 1986 for Billy Joel) and especially “This Is The Time” (which hit #18 for Billy Joel but barely cracks the Top 100 here). “Code of Silence” was not released as a single IOTL; nor was “Running on Ice.”
