Brinkley writes in her memoir that it initially started out as a song for a "mystery girl" Joel had been having phone conversations with, but when his relationship with Brinkley began, he finished it in her honor. Their relationship was then forever immortalized in the hit song's iconic music video, in which Brinkley appears in.

"He was acting delusional in a way I’d never seen before," Brinkley wrote of the incident. "I was so scared that I couldn’t think."