“I’m Your Man” by Leonard Cohen
Records for Lovers Week kicks off with an oddball 80s dissertation on romance.
Programming note: I got married this past weekend (!), and, as a result, I'm taking a step back from content creation until next Monday. I thought I'd keep this week's slate of album recommendations mood-appropriate by celebrating romance in all its musical forms. I'm calling it "Records for Lovers Week" because I'm cheesy like that.
Multiple genres, some hidden gems, maybe a classic or two—hope you enjoy it!
Hello! 😊👋
Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!
Today’s music pick is a revelatory dissertation on love from one of music’s supreme poets.
Genre: Pop, Singer/Songwriter
Label: Sony Music
Release Date: Columbia
Vibe: 😯
The photo that graces the I’m Your Man album cover is a near-perfect distillation of Leonard Cohen’s late-career appeal: sophisticated, sexy, charismatic, and, judging by the half-eaten banana in his hand, a stubborn refusal to take any of it too seriously. The contradictory nature of this stance makes much of this album so appealing. It’s at once a document of blissful romance (the title track) or at least memories thereof (”Ain’t No Cure for Love”), using his stoic, baritone delivery to devastatingly sensual effect. However, this may also be Cohen’s most realistic, even nihilistic, portrait of relationships. Every word has an audible world-weariness, as if he’s resigned to his inability to live up to the utopian image of what love could or should be.
Musically, there’s a little bit of everything here too. The opener, “First We Take Manhattan,” surrounds the narrator with bouncy synths and a stuttering drum machine, a counterpoint to his somewhat ominous tone as he proclaims, “I'd really like to live beside you, baby/I love your body and your spirit and your clothes.” The stunning “Take this Waltz,” based on Cohen’s own translation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Pequeño Vals Vienés,” positions the poet as a man who, despite his understanding of the potential pitfalls of pursuing his ideal women, decides to move ahead anyway. Some of the imagery is breathtaking (”I want you […] In some hallway where love's never been/On a bed where the moon has been sweating”). The only misfire here is “Jazz Police,” an incomprehensible mishmash of hip-hop drum loops and stilted paranoia.
However, even at its most controversial, there’s no denying I’m Your Man’s place near or at the top of Cohen’s discography. Underneath the cynicism, he proves he’s still a true romantic.
👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈