{"id":975568,"date":"2020-03-10T13:11:24","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T19:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=965252"},"modified":"2020-03-10T13:11:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T19:11:24","slug":"flashback-billy-joel-declares-that-hes-all-for-leyna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/flashback-billy-joel-declares-that-hes-all-for-leyna\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Billy Joel Declares That He\u2019s \u2018All for Leyna\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This week marks the 40th anniversary of Billy Joel<\/a>\u2019s 1980 album Glass Houses<\/em>. The LP was a huge success that topped the Billboard Album Chart and generated the hit singles \u201cIt\u2019s Still Rock and Roll to Me\u201d and \u201cYou May Be Right,\u201d but the first song anyone actually heard from the album was lead single \u201cAll for Leyna.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, Joel was coming off a huge string of enormous hits like \u201cHonesty,\u201d \u201cBig Shot,\u201d \u201cMy Life,\u201d and \u201cShe\u2019s Always a Woman,\u201d and there was much excitement for Glass Houses<\/em>, but \u201cAll for Leyna\u201d didn\u2019t even ding the Hot 100. This was a year before MTV, but a video was still shot for the track. As you can see, it looks like it took about 15 minutes to create.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll for Leyna\u201d is told from the perspective of a guy who becomes obsessed with a woman named Leyna after having a one-night stand with her. \u201cI\u2019m failing in school,\u201d Joel sings. \u201cLosing my friends\/Making my family lose their minds\/I don\u2019t want to eat\/I don\u2019t want to sleep\/I only want Leyna, one more time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tunes was recorded right as the Knack\u2019s \u201cMy Sharona\u201d was blaring out of radios all across the country. Both are songs about an undying obsession with a woman that has a very unusual name ending with the letter \u201cA.\u201d Unlike Leyna, however, Sharona was a minor and the focus on her is beyond disturbing when examined today. (Sample \u201cMy Sharona\u201d lyric: \u201cNever gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind\/Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind.\u201d)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know much about Leyna beyond her decision to break things off with the narrator after a single night. For whatever reason, radio programmers and the general public vastly preferred hearing about Sharona. Don\u2019t feel too bad for Billy Joel, though. His next two singles were \u201cYou May Be Right\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s Still Rock and Roll to Me.\u201d The Knack dissolved just two years later (though there would be multiple reunions) and Joel continues to pack stadiums and arenas all across the globe.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also managed to give \u201cAll for Leyna\u201d a second life. He dusted it off in 2002 after not playing it for years and it\u2019s become a regular part of his show. Fans that ignored it back in 1980 now sing along to every word. And somewhere in the world a grandmother named Leyna is like, \u201cYou\u2019re still going on about that one night? Get over it!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Billy Joel\u2019s 1980 album Glass Houses. The LP was a huge success that topped the Billboard Album Chart and generated the hit singles \u201cIt\u2019s Still Rock and Roll to Me\u201d and \u201cYou May Be Right,\u201d but the first song anyone actually heard from the album was lead single […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-975568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 16:06:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}