Cyndi Lauper is a Tony winner for Best Original Score for her show Kinky Boots.

The list of composers who have won the same award read like a who's who of the musical theater, including Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman and Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Kinky Boots, the story of a struggling shoe company that is revived when it starts making fetish-style footware for drag artists. It was originally a 2005 British film and was adapted for the theater by Harvey Fierstein with music and lyrics by Lauper.

All told, the musical won six out of the thirteen awards for which it was nominated, Best Musical, Best Original Score (Lauper), Best Actor in a Musical (Billy Porter), Best Sound Design For a Musical (John Shivers), Best Choreography (Jerry Mitchell, who also directed) and Best Orchestrations (Stephen Oremus).

Lauper is not the first artist to come out of popular music to win the composing Tony. Roger Miller did it first in 1985 with Big River and Rupert Holmes won the next year for The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Since then, the award has gone to Pete Townshend (1993, Tommy), Elton John and Tim Rice (2000, Aida) and Duncan Sheik (2007, Spring Awakening).