Dance Me to the End of Love

Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist Leonard Norman Cohen came into the world on September 21, 1934. He created a lot of poetry that also became songs with themes like faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cohen left this world on November 7, 2016, at the age of 82.

“Anthem” is a song that expresses the message of hope in darkness and encourages us to ring the bells that can still be rung. Cohen is renowned for this song. It is featured on his 1992 album, The Future.

"Bird on the Wire" is a song that was written by Cohen and became one of his signature songs. It is featured on his 1969 album Songs from a Room. In the 1960s, the singer lived on Hydra, a Greek island, with his girlfriend Marianne Ihlen, who is shown on the back cover of this album. She helped him out of his depression, and he composed this song, inspired by a bird sitting on a phone wire, but finished it in a Hollywood motel. When Songs from a Room was re-released in 2007 on the sleeve notes this song was described as “simultaneously a prayer and an anthem, a kind of Bohemian ‘My Way.’”

“Chelsea Hotel 2” is all about the famous Chelsea Hotel in NYC. It is also about Cohen’s night meeting and spending it with the American singer Janis Joplin. It became one of this most famous songs. It is featured on his 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

“Dance Me to the End of Love” was recorded by Cohen in 1984 and is featured on his album Various Positions. The instrumentals are evocative of traditional klezmer music. Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.

"First We Take Manhattan" is a song written by Cohen. and is featured on his 1986 album Famous Blue Raincoat. Cohen introduced the new, funk-influenced arrangement suggested by his backing vocalists, Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen. He continued to perform the song this way in 1993, 2008, and 2009 tours.

“Going Home” is the opening track of his album Old Ideas. Cohen sings about writing "a manual for living with defeat" on this song. At the age of 77 he earned his highest ever charting album on the Billboard 200 chart.

“Hallelujah” was written by Cohen and is featured on his 1984 album Various Positions. The song became a great hit and is at number 259 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song received widespread popularity when it was recorded by American musician Jeff Buckley, and his version was featured in the 2001 film “Shrek.” "Hallelujah" experienced renewed interest following Cohen's death in November 2016 and re-appeared on international singles charts, including entering the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time.

“Sisters of Mercy” was written by Cohen as a tribute to two girls who shared a hotel room with him during a snowstorm in Edmonton, Canada. The singer said this was the only song he wrote in one sitting. It was used in the 1971 film “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”, along with two other songs from the same album "Winter Lady" and "The Stranger Song."

“Suzanne” was first published as a poem in 1966. Cohen performed it as his debut single from his 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen.

“A Thousand Kisses Deep” was written by Cohen in 2001. It is part of his poems that mix erotic memory, regret, and spiritual seeking. The poem frames a weary, accepting voice confronting love, loss, and mortality, returning to the refrain a thousand kisses deep" as a measure of intimacy and time.

“You Want It Darker” is a song from the album of the same name. It came out in 2016, 17 days before Cohen died. Created at the end of his life the songs focus on death, God, and humor. The title track “You Want It Darker” received the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance after his passing in 2018. It was Cohen's last album released during his lifetime and was followed by the posthumous album Thanks for the Dance in November 2019.

And in honor of this great singer, I finish with the song “Thanks for the Dance,” written by Cohen.