![\"Songwriter](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/07fcee49-8bdf-47b2-bf05-c7763b0317e1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\nFrom the limo-driven days in her teens and being broke in her 20s, to dealing with sexual assault and endometriosis, Donaghmede-reared artist RuthAnne Cunningham talks about her journey as a songwriter, singer and mother alongside the release of her new album and book\n<\/p>\n
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Songwriter and singer RuthAnne Cunningham’s new book It\u2019s Not Just a Song is out now. Photo: Nina Val<\/p>\n
RuthAnne Cunningham was 17 years old when she co-wrote the song Too Little Too Late for US popstar JoJo, which in 2006 broke various Billboard chart records, won gold and platinum records in six countries and made it to No 2 in the Irish charts. The following year, the song won an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers award for Cunningham and her co-songwriters Billy Steinberg (Madonna\u2019s Like a Virgin, The Bangles\u2019 Eternal Flame, Cyndi Lauper\u2019s True Colours) and Josh Alexander (Demi Lovato\u2019s Give Your Heart a Break). \u201cThat song was so huge. It was on the radio all the time. Everyone knew it. Everywhere I went, it was being played. It was just insane,\u201d Cunningham recalls with a huge smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were then flying me all these places because they wanted to sign me as a writer, and this was back in the day when they\u2019d send a limo to the airport to pick you up, and there were the dinners and all the \u2018Oh, you\u2019re amazing.\u2019 So I was like, \u2018Oh, God, this, this is easy. I\u2019m in. I\u2019ve got my foot in the door. I don\u2019t have to get the boat back to Ireland\u2019, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the limo-driven days in her teens and being broke in her 20s, to dealing with sexual assault…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[12865,18,117,19,17,4746,7250,1181,65432],"class_list":{"0":"post-103831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-britney-spears","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-life-magazine","14":"tag-madonna","15":"tag-rte","16":"tag-sarah-caden"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}