LEONARD COHEN - TAKE THIS WALTZ

TAKE THIS WALTZ

LEONARD COHEN

SONGWRITERS: GARCIA LORCA & LEONARD COHEN

COUNTRY: CANADA

ALBUM: I’M YOUR MAN

LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS

GENRE: SOFT ROCK

YEAR: 1988

 

      Leonard Norman Cohen(September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death and romantic relationships. Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize.

         Cohen pursued a career as a poet and novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s, and did not begin a music career until 1967 at the age of 33. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen(1967), was followed by three more albums of folk music: Songs from a Room(1969), Songs of Love and Hate(1971) and New Skin for the Old Ceremony(1974). His 1977 record Death of a Ladies' Man, co-written and produced by Phil Spector, was a move away from Cohen's previous minimalist sound. In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs, which blended his acoustic style with jazz, East Asian, and Mediterranean influences. Cohen's most famous song, "Hallelujah", was first released on his studio álbum Various Positions in 1984. I'm Your Man in 1988 marked Cohen's turn to synthesized productions. In 1992, Cohen released its follow-up, The Future, which had dark lyrics and references to political and social unrest.

         Cohen returned to music in 2001 with the release of Ten New Songs, which was a major hit in Canada and Europe. His 11th album, Dear Heather, followed in 2004. Following a successful string of tours between 2008 and 2013, Cohen released three albums in the final four years of his life: Old Ideas(2012), Popular Problems (2014) and You Want It Darker(2016), the last of which was released three weeks before his death. A posthumous album, Thanks for the Dance, was released in November 2019, his fifteenth and final studio album.

      I'm Your Man is the eighth studio album by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, released on February 2, 1988 by Columbia Records. The album marked Cohen's further move to a more modern sound, with many songs having a synthesizer-oriented production. It soon became the most successful album which Cohen had released in the US, and it reached number one in several European countries, transforming Cohen into a best-selling artist.

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women

There's a shoulder where death comes to cry

There's a lobby with nine hundred windows

There's a tree where the doves go to die

There's a piece that was torn from the morning

And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

Take this waltz, take this waltz

Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

 

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you

On a chair with a dead magazine

In a cave at the tip of the lily

In some hallway where love's never been

On a bed where the moon has been sweating

In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

Take this waltz, take this waltz

Take its broken waist in your hand

 

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz

With its very own breath of brandy and death

Dragging its tail in the sea

 

There's a concert hall in Vienna

Where your mouth had a thousand reviews

There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking

They've been sentenced to death by the blues

Ah but who is it climbs to your picture

With a garland of freshly cut tears?

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

Take this waltz, take this waltz

Take this waltz it's been dying for years

 

There's an attic where children are playing

Where I've got to lie down with you soon

In a dream of Hungarian lanterns

In the mist of some sweet afternoon

And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow

All your sheep and your lilies of snow

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

Take this waltz, take this waltz

With its, I'll never forget you, you know

 

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz

With its very own breath of brandy and death

Dragging its tail in the sea

 

And I'll dance with you in Vienna

I'll be wearing a river's disguise

The hyacinth wild on my shoulder

My mouth on the dew of your thighs

 

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook

With the photographs there, and the moss

And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty

My cheap violin and my cross

 

And you'll carry me down on your dancing

To the pools that you lift on your wrist

Oh my love, oh my love

Take this waltz, take this waltz

It's yours now, it's all that there is.