Humour Of Cohen's Lyrics

linmag · Post by **linmag** » Fri Jun 20, 2003 2:58 am

"I can't forget, but I don't remember who", and "I'll be there today with a big bouquet of cactus".

Aavalanche · Post by **Aavalanche** » Fri Jun 20, 2003 4:29 am

Most of Songs of Love and Hate is suffused with black humour. A brilliant album. One of his best.
Unlike the postings of partisan which are nasty obsession.

Shouldering your loneliness like a gun you will not learn to aim.

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Fri Jun 20, 2003 9:14 am

Aavalanche -

You will know from other threads that I share your views about the nasty nature of many (not all) of partisan's posts. But I think we should not let ourselves be contaminated by their spirit, and fall prey to the same style we rightly criticize in them. Your side blow, unfortunately, came close to it.

Tom

Nazio · Post by **Nazio** » Sat Jun 21, 2003 12:49 am

Going back to the subject...

Apart from some other songs mentioned before, I have always found the following lines from "Chelsea Hotel" funny enough:

"You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception. "

The delivery in the live version with the perfectly-timed chuckle helps a lot.

It reminds me a joke by a cousin of mine who used to say that ugly men are all the rage now, and that gives us a huge advantage! (I pity the other poor guys, BTW...)

Jo · Post by Jo » Sat Jun 21, 2003 9:40 am

I've always loved Leonard's black humour - but my personal favourite is:

everybody knows you've been discreet
there were so many people you just had to meet
without your clothes

Jo

witty_owl · Post by **witty_owl** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 3:59 pm

What a splendid opening for a song!

I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.
But the room just filled up with mosquitos, they heard that my body was free.

Witty Owl.

Shoe · Post by **Shoe** » Wed Jun 25, 2003 9:06 pm

Hi everybody! Thank you for all your suggestions, I might try to put them in some kind of order soon. Incidently I've just started to listen to DEATH OF A LADIES MAN much more. I've had it for ages but not gave it the attension it deserves untill recently. I think that DOALM could go in a FUNNY ALBUMS catagory.....

Rhodes · Post by **Rhodes** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 5:11 pm

I think that 'The Butcher' is full of humour. Is it just me?

greta · Post by **greta** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 9:27 pm

"the monkey and the plywood violin..."
seems quite humourous to me...

magneticcry · Post by **magneticcry** » Fri Jul 25, 2003 9:48 pm

hi greta and all the others!
you are so damn right...
there are jokes everywhere in his songs,lurking,just waiting for being discovered...not every listener gets the point of those humorous parts

Cia · Post by **Cia** » Fri Jul 25, 2003 10:02 pm

the bed is kind of narrow, but my arms are open wide

Who would care about a narrow bed then

Cia

lizzytysh · Post by **lizzytysh** » Sat Jul 26, 2003 1:17 am

Nice image, Cia

.

Vonny · Post by **Vonny** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:15 am

"you went right on loving
and i went on a fast
now i am too thin
and your love is too vast"

FANTASTIC AND VERY FUNNY - ALWAYS MAKES ME LAUGH OUT LOUD !!

david birkett · Post by **david birkett** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:00 pm

A stimulating discussion (is it a coincidence that many of the particpants are British?).

Almost all the songs are laced with mordant humour, and those knee-jerk 'listeners' who attach the label of depressing have foolishly equated the admittedly narrow range and lugubrious sound of Cohen's voice with a lack of wit and charm.

I get very boring on this, but the very rhymes used in perhaps his most profound song, "Hallelujah" are hilarious, and embody his tendency to combine the sacred and the profane.

Infact, I was tempted to say that all the songs are funny, but this is perhaps an extreme view ("Hey That's No Way" isn't, I think, and one would probably have to exclude the instrumental "Tacoma Trailer").

Thought you might enjoy this from Kurt Vonnegut:

Vonnegut: Well, of course, humor is an almost physiological response, to fears, as I understand it. What Freud said about humor was that it is a response to frustration -- one of several. A dog, he said, when he can't get out a gate, will scratch and start digging and making meaningless gestures -- perhaps growling or whatever to deal with frustration or surprise or fear. I saw the destruction of Dresden. I mean I saw it before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterwards, and certainly one response is laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief. So yes, I suppose any subject is subject to laughter and I suppose there was laughter of a very ghastly kind by victims in Auschwitz.

Cargas: I've heard this laughter described as defiance to God, in the sense of Isaac's laughter. But then there would be a distinction between laughter and humor.

Vonnegut: Yes. A great deal of laughter is induced by fear. We were working on a funny television series years ago we were trying to put one together and we had as a basic principle that death had to be mentioned in every show. And this ingredient would make any laughter deeper without the audience's realizing how we were inducing belly laughs -- we hoped. We intended to do it with the mention of death. There is a superficial sort of laughter. I don't consider Bob Hope a humorist, really. He's a comedian. It's very thin stuff; nothing troubling is mentioned. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy and could still do it now. And there's terrible tragedy there somehow, as these people are too sweet to survive in this world and they are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed.

Remember how the murderous monk in "The Name of the Rose" hated laughter?

All the best -

David

hydriot · Post by **hydriot** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 9:55 pm

It would probably be quicker to identify the songs completely without humour.

LC's humour varies from the obvious and jolly ("discreet/meet/without your clothes") to the dark and painfully true. In the latter category, I place the whole of Everybody Knows, which is certainly one of my all time favourites. It is so so real.

But gentle humour also underpins his most intense imagery. So real, so true of life, and yet so amusing are the lines:

"I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch. He said to me 'You should not ask for so much'. And a pretty girl leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me 'Hey why not ask for more?'

Those lines remind me of Polly Garter in Under Milk Wood: "Isn't life terrible, thank God!"