Various Positions was produced by John Lissauer, who had been at the helm of Cohen's 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony. Cohen wrote around 80 draft verses for the tune, with one writing session at the Royalton Hotel in New York where he was reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, banging his head on the floor. Cohen's words are often interestingly cryptic, moving and deeply reflective, rather than being outrightly political or 'protest'. Written in the key of C major, the chord progression matches lyrics from the song: "goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift": C, F, G, A minor, F. The use of synthesisers and Cohen's "new voice" would mark the beginning of a new era in Cohen's composing style and sound.

situations, beginning perhaps (it isn`t spelt out) with a Mary the Madonna figure, then taking in a father, wife, lover, until the final verse by which time our narrator is getting on in years. The pieces in Book of Mercy were coming and I was, slowly, writing the album that ended up as Various Positions.This explains the slight strain in Cohen's singing on the track; changing the key on the Casio would have meant altering the drum pattern that Cohen wanted to use (The song, which would become Cohen's perennial show opener, is performed in a lower key live). Released in 1985 Various Positions proved to be a transitional album for Cohen, poised halfway between the classic balladic style of Recent Songs and the cool electronic backing of I'm Your Man. It is one of Cohen`s most deeply felt and most moving songs - a poem, a meditation on the stages of life, a hesitant prayer to life itself. Although structured as a love song, "Dance Me to the End of Love" was in fact inspired by the Holocaust. The unusually straightforward love song "Coming Back to You" was covered by both Trisha Yearwood and Martin L.

As usual it is Cohen's strong lyrics (more poetry really) and the quality of his voice that holds the simple backing tunes together. Cohen, like very few others, has always appreciated that love is at least as much comedy as tragedy. instead of presenting me with the new songs exclusively on a Spanish guitar as usual, he had this dinky little Casio keyboard with him . I think this is one of the great Cohen albums, despite its admittedly slightly generic musical accompaniments and less feisty female singers than we`re used to.An hermetic, contemplative, wonderfully sung and played tour-de-force that will disarm and captivate the listener at first hearing. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

As a lyricist, Cohen has few, if any, peers--he has never been the relentless doom-monger of popular myth, but a wise, warm and frequently very funny chronicler of heartbreak. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I've Been a fan of this record ever since I heard "If it be your will" in the movie Pump on the Volume When I was a teenager. The pulling and the putting of the pieces together coherently, the being inside of that process and knowing, once I'd done that, it would be finished and I would have to leave it and go back to the world. Cryptic and spartan, the set continues in the eclectic vein of recent efforts, but with greater clarity and focus, resulting in an intriguingly diffuse collection ranging from the Serge Gainsbourg-esque pop of 'Dance Me to the End of Love' to the boozy, country-inflected 'The Captain.The song contains several biblical references, most notably evoking the stories of Samson and traitorous Delilah from the Book of Judges ("she cut your hair") as well as the adulterous King David and Bathsheba ("you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you").

If you are new to Leonard Cohen I'd also get the later 'I'm your man', plus perhaps 'The Future' and 'Songs from a room'. I've listened to it during a million (full)moonlit nights and sung some of its songs aloud again and again (and then some)!The recording quality of all these re-released Cohen CD's is very good, and this one is no exception. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.