We selected the ten best songs by the singer-songwriter from Madrid’s Alameda de Osuna, whether solo or fronting Pereza.
Already well aware of an artistic maturity worked with effort and passion over almost three decades, Leiva faces a new moment in his life, calmly, putting his physical and emotional well-being first. The recent documentary, “Until I run out of voice” deals with a bit of all this, in which it exposes a little more about the person behind the successful rocker who has managed to place his relevance in the history of Spanish rock at the same level as Robe, Bunbury or Loquillo.
10. “Breaking Bad”
Table of Contents
Leiva had already experienced several milestones in his career when he released, in 2016, “Monstruos”, his third solo album. But perhaps at this moment, after opening for the Rolling Stones at the Bernabéu or reigning on radio stations throughout the State, things began to definitively get out of control: “You thought he would be the best: be careful with expectations,” the Madrid native warned in one of the main singles from that work, a review, now that we are getting nostalgic, of all the moments in which his own career was surpassing him.
9. “Gigante”
This concern, the success that surpasses, has been a constant in the lyrics of a Leiva “accustomed to a constant state of shock” since then. “Gigante”, which opens and gives title to his latest album, released in 2025, is another new proof, also demonstrating his love for classic Americana with an instrumental reminiscent of Lynryrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”.
8. “My little Chernobyl”
“Nuclear”, Leiva’s fourth album, revealed certain new affiliations, or rather slightly folded its sound, as also happened to Bunbury, to the indie epic that we associate more with artists like Iván Ferreiro – with whom he has actively collaborated –, Love of Lesbian or Viva Sweden. It was perhaps the first time that he faced the most unmovable critics and that part of the public perhaps dared to question his direction, and his response, this “My Little Chernobyl”, sharpened his best lyrics at the same time that he hybridized the sound that had been criticized with a classic like El Último de la Fila in the chorus, a tribute to “A San Fernando”.
7. “Until I lose my voice”
It is becoming clear that the best Leiva of maturity is the one who little by little accepts his condition and the challenges of life. The one who looks back. His latest song, in which he confronts the frenetic generational changes of the world with deep reflection and a folk intimacy that is like Bon Iver in milongas, is the last great example. Original song from the documentary film of the same name, it talks about addictions, ghosts and escape forward in the language it knows best.
6. “Terribly cruel”
The great opening of Leiva’s solo career that was “Diciembre” (2012), a promising work that knew how to put distance with the long shadow of Pereza, was perhaps definitively confirmed with the release of “Terribly cruel”, this Argentine-inspired classic rock rocked by wurlitzers that was the first single from “Pólvora”. With the assistance of his brother Juancho, leader of Sidecars – Pereza’s companion band on the Alameda de Osuna scene – and supported by the consolidation of the Leiband, it was perhaps the first great milestone of his new career.
5. “Sincericidio”
One of Leiva’s most borderline and Tex-Mex songs, with one of his most angry and raw lyrics, one of those slightly toxic love-hate declarations – the most risky double meaning of the song is “Te Quiero Reventar la Boca”, for example – in the tradition of “With or Without You”. It remains one of the highlights of their concerts to this day, and over time it has been confirmed as one of the fans’ favorites.
4. “Polar Star”
Mick Taylor, former guitarist of the Rolling Stones, came to play guitar on “Aproximaciones” (2007), the album with which Pereza confirmed itself as a band with a generational impact similar to Estopa or El Canto del Loco. Legend has it that most of the songs, including this delicious and psychedelic collaboration with Juan Aguirre de Amaral, emerged from the Laboratorio Ñ, a composition campus organized by what would now be the SGAE Foundation in which, in addition to Amaral and Leiva, Iván Ferreiro, Xoel López and Quique González participated.
3. “I think about that afternoon”
It is difficult to measure the importance of this pop punk blow in the generational change of pop rock in our country in the first two thousand: David Summers, from Hombres G, sponsored the song, and Dani Martín from El Canto del Loco joined his voice at a time when his band was also pushing from below towards the top positions of the charts. It was the battering ram with which Pereza broke down the door of the industry, and the fever for them – and especially for Leiva’s lyrics – did not stop growing.
2. “As if you were going to die tomorrow”
The flag of “Nuclear”, of Leiva’s indie turn, of his assault on large venues and probably also of his artistic maturity, after having produced an album for Sabina and collaborated with Los Javis on the soundtrack of the musical “La Llamada”. An exhortation to carpe diem and the collige virgo rosas that also perfectly channels the panoramic and big-screen rock energy of his tours since 2018, that slightly more massive ambition that would define the Madrid singer-songwriter ever since. It remains his most listened to song, and the most climatic and celebrated of his concerts.
1. “Lady Madrid”
If Leiva has an anthem, it is undoubtedly “Lady Madrid”. A love song more for the city that has seen him grow than for any lady, it is both the story of those who left and those who stayed, of the scorned, of the abandoned, of the anonymous urban heroines and the pension and couch hustlers. Of all the cats that have ever been lost in this city that is sometimes too fond of hats and corduroys. A kind of “Let’s say I’m talking about Madrid” from Malasa and without peaks that not only talks about a city and the beings that inhabit it, but about a very specific moment. It was already, like many songs on “Aviones” (2009), purely Leiva, a warning of the American and mature direction that he was about to take, leaving Pereza definitively behind. The emblem of his own transition.
