1983Released
4:01

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Time After Time. By Songfacts®.

Cyndi Lauper wrote this highly emotional song with Rob Hyman of The Hooters, who also sang backup on the track. She came up with the title when she saw it in the magazine TV Guide. Time After Time is the name of a 1979 science fiction movie starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, whose time machine is stolen by Jack The Ripper, who uses it to travel from 1893 to 1979. Wells follows him into the future and goes on a quest to stop him from killing. Rob Hyman told Songfacts: "When she saw Time After Time, something clicked. She said, 'I think I have a title.'" Once the title was in place, they set about writing the song. Hyman explained: "I was sitting at the piano and just started banging out what would eventually be the chorus, hook, and the way we sing it. It almost had like a reggae feel, it was a little bouncier and a little more upbeat. We started getting off on that chorus, then the verse melodies started to appear. It's a deceptively simple song. The verses are just a little repeating three-note motif - almost like a nursery rhyme, a very simple song. Then we started to realize we were on to something. The mood of the lyrics came from both of us. I think Cyndi came in and really started the lyric flow, then all of the sudden we realized it wasn't such a bouncy song, but it was a little more bittersweet and a little deeper in its feeling and a little more poignant, so the music started to change. We wrote a little bridge section and I think the last thing we really wrote was the chorus. We had 'Time After Time,' we just had to get the words that would surround it."

Lauper and her co-writer Rob Hyman both drew on their own intimate relationships to write the lyric. It was the first song they wrote together. They didn't know each other very well, which may have helped them open up to each other. "At this point, we were both going through some personal relationships and some personal things that were both meaningful and deep for us, and somehow the lyrics just started to come out," Hyman told Songfacts. "It's almost one of those things where you can open up to a stranger or a more casual acquaintance than a deep friend or family member. Sometimes you meet someone at a party and you start saying things about yourself that you might not say to your closest friend. I think with the things we were both going through - for me it was a relationship that was just breaking up and for Cyndi with her manager, which was also a personal relationship - I think the song reflected that mood."

Cyndi Lauper's sassy first single was "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," released in September 1983. Thanks to a colorful video that ran constantly on MTV, it was a sensation, going to #2 in the US in March 1984 (behind "Jump" by Van Halen). "Time After Time" was the follow-up single. It went to #1 in June and established Lauper as a supremely versatile singer who could also write her own songs ("Girls Just Want To Have Fun" was written and originally recorded by Robert Hazard). She had another US #1 hit in 1986 with "True Colors."

Top Listeners

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Time After Time.
CKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
130BPM

Album

The album Time After Time is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Time After Time.
Portrait
(P) 1983 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.6MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists