Leonard Cohen’s five greatest songs of longing
No one wrote of love like Leonard Cohen could. It surely all comes down to his roots as a poet first and musician second, writing his songs as sonnets and not resting until the exact turn of phrase his affection needed was perfect. And when he managed it, he made some of the most beautiful, longing songs ever put to tape.
That’s perhaps down to the fact that Cohen seemed to understand what longing truly was. For a man who consistently wrote of himself as ‘ugly’, despite being an undeniably handsome guy in his younger years, he knew unrequited love well. He was clearly someone who fell hard and fast, regardless of whether it was reciprocated or not, moving through love affair after love affair, desire to desire.
He understood the differentiations between love, longing, and lust, allowing himself a whole spectrum of emotions to colour his work with. The feeling of desire was never just one note or one shade. Instead, it was dynamic and nuanced, and he always found a new way to explain it or a new motivation to try.
Cohen wrote of longing as if it were a feeling of spiritual importance, like a state close to godliness and as if love were a religion. Putting these experiences on high was always going to lead to high art, like these five songs.
Leonard Cohen’s five best songs about longing:
‘If It Be Your Will’
Like so many of Leonard Cohen’s songs, especially the most moving, yearnful ones, ‘If It Be Your Will’ started its life as a poem, meticulously crafted over time until he had the phrasing just right. And the finished result is devastatingly beautiful.
It’s a love song that sounds more like a hymn than anything else. This is more prayer than poem as Cohen sings of his longing with utter spiritual devotion, blurring the lines between a lover and God. “If it be your will / That I speak no more / And my voice be still / As it was before,” he begins, willing to follow any instruction for his lover, “I will speak no more / I shall abide until / I am spoken for.” It’s too much, too beautiful, too devotional to even try to analyse.
‘I’m Your Man’
Let’s say ‘If It Be Your Will’ is a hymn that sees his lover as god, ‘I’m Your Man’ is its devilish companion as Cohen swings all the way into pure seduction. Set over a sleazy 1980s instrumental and forever connected to the erotic cinematic scenes it soundtracks in Secretary, it’s not only one of his most longing songs, but certainly one of his sexiest.
Offering to be anything for his lover from a doctor examining “every inch”, a boxer prepared to fight, a drive to get them from place to place or even the father of their children, Cohen is willing to do anything – just in a far less PG and pure way than in ‘If It Be Your Will’.
‘Take This Longing’
The clue is in the title. In this 1974 track, written at the height of an unrequited desire for Nico, Cohen’s longing is simply too much. It’s too much for one man to handle, and he needs her help, obviously, singing, “take this longing from my tongue” as perhaps the most poetic and beautiful way a man could ever beg for a kiss.
Like every Cohen long song, this is a poem. It’s songs like this that make it so understandable how he gained the reputation as a ladies’ man, because who would ever hear the line “everything depends upon how near you sleep to me,” and not dive into bed?
‘Lover Lover Lover’
In another example of Cohen turning begging into an art form, ‘Lover Lover Lover’ is exactly that. “Lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, come back to me,” he pleads, dedicating the simple chorus to nothing but that base desire.
But even in the more nuanced verses, he’s still just down on his knees. This time though, he’s begging his father, who seems to be a stand in for God, to help him out, to make him more attractive, to give him a new name or even just to let him reincarnate and start all over again in hopes he could keep the affection of his lover on a second go round. Making sense of the album title, he’s begging for new skin for the old ceremony of love.
‘One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong’
It seems Cohen’s longing for Nico just wouldn’t quit him. According to Sylvie Simmons, the author of the biography I’m Your Man, his desire for her was all-consuming. “His thoughts full of Nico, he wrote ‘The Jewels in Your Shoulder’; and ‘Take This Longing’, then titled ‘The Bells’, both of which he later played and taught to Nico. She was both “the tallest and blondest girl” in the song ‘Memories’ and the muse for ‘Joan of Arc’”, she wrote adding another to that list, “She also inspired ‘One of Us Cannot Be Wrong’”. She was everywhere, in all of his songs, and in this one, he’s on a mission to try to be free.
Journeying from a doctor to a saint to the remote land of an Eskimo, he simply finds more desire at every stop, writing of a world in which every single man he encountered wants Nico, too. Similar to the weight of his longing in ‘Take This Longing’, Cohen writes of his love as a burden too heavy for him to handle.
