Billy Joel - Leningrad

What this video is

Released in October 1989 — weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall — 'Leningrad' embodies the cultural and geopolitical thaw of the late Glasnost era. Billy Joel had become one of the first major Western rock artists to tour the Soviet Union in 1987, playing six concerts in Moscow and Leningrad underwritten with his own funds. The song and its video constitute a rare mainstream American pop artifact that humanizes…

Why it matters

A landmark of late-1980s adult contemporary narrative rock, 'Leningrad' demonstrates the capacity of the pop music video to function as documentary essay. Its archival montage format diverges from the era's dominant MTV performance-and-concept formats, anticipating the more historically engaged…

The director

Kathy Dougherty is a director and producer active from the mid-1980s onward, credited on both music video and documentary projects. Her notable works include the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers video 'Don't Come Around Here No More' (1985, special effects),…