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Parsifal wrote:
Tried to listen to the DOALM version of Memories today, but it just doesn't speak to me....so, tried the FCC live version instead - a whole world of difference there!

Those two versions are quite polarising! I used to much prefer the FCC one to the album version, I thought the album version was too slow, but recently that has flipped and now the DOALM version is my favourite - you just can't beat those horns/trumpets for a dramatic push I may of course have changed my mind again by next month

i've been much entranced by "light as a breeze" lately; aside from LC version, there's a great version by Billy Joel on the "Tower of Song" tribute album--and I usually don't much care for arrangements by others. i've been listening to Dear Heather for the first time in a long time...and don't like it, which really surprises me as I almost always like all LC stuff. just shows he's human!

I'm currently in love with Stories of the Street, but I've been rehearsing it to perform with my boyfriend, which I'm terrified to do because I have severe stage fright. When I went to the concert in May I would have said my favourite song was the Stranger Song, but then The Partisan blew me away live. My boyfriend plays Diamonds in the Mine because I asked him to learn it for me, so that one is up there, too. But I always go back to Master Song. It moves me in ways I prefer not to discuss on a forum. This is my first post!!!!!! YIPPEE!!!!!!! Welcome to leonardcohenforum!!!!!!!!!!

Sing Another Song Boys is my favourite right now,I find this song so uplifting I dont know why! Always have loved it tho.

Lover Lover Lover is my latest favorite. The lyrics are haunting and Leonard`s voice is mesmerizing.
"Then let me start again," I cried,
"please let me start again,
I want a face that's fair this time,
I want a spirit that is calm."

Take This Longing ...

"Take this longing from my tongue.. " illustrates Leonard's amazing ability to verbally describe the deepest feelings, in this case I imagine the aching desire for the loved one which never seems to be satisfied so much so that any absence is unbearable.

I do find that "Dance me to the end of love" is the Leonard song I go to first on more days than any other.

Evie B

At this moment, listening to Leonard Cohen while sick in bed, I'm going crazy about 'Queen Victoria'. What a great song, I love the lyrics and the way they are sung.

Queen Victoria,
I am cold and rainy,
I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station,
I feel like an empty cast iron exhibition,
I want ornaments on everything,
because my love, she gone with other boys.

A little bit bored and feeling down reading concertreports and looking at youtubeversions. And suddenly, Loverloverlover, Bratislava!! I never really liked that song in the years he first sang it. But now! Unbelievable, this is so good, so deep, his voice, and really the words speak to me for the first time. Okay, so this is the song right now, over and over again...

Lover lover lover has been one of the songs I haven't had as a favorite, never took the time to really listen to it until now. In listening to it just now, I realize that here again is a Leonard Cohen song with multiple layers. The first impression that I get is a man singing to a woman who has left him. He's making excuses for his failures...

I asked my father,
I said, "Father change my name."
The one I'm using now it's covered up
with fear and filth and cowardice and shame.

But if you look a bit deeper, "lover" is synonimous with god. Leonard seems to use those two words almost interchangebly (lover/love and god). Father in this song could refer to both god and a physical human father.

I've learned NEVER to say I don't like a certain song of Leonard's. I like some more than others, but as soon as I say I don't like one, I give it another listen and find a depth that I hadn't imagined before.

Lili

You`re so right Lily, on both items: there`s a time you really can hear other layers in a song that before you didn`t or couldn`t hear.
And yes, woman/lover/love/god, I think the reason lover lover lover now speaks to me is because I now hear and need the deeper layer where lover is God.
thank you

Waiting for the miracle is one I keep playing over and over for the last few days,what I love is how you can go from one song to another and always find something new in the way it moves you ,at least thats how I feel!there's no rhyme or reason to it just Leonards wonderful moving ,funny,sad,spiritual,uplifting songs.

Today, it is Ballad of the Absent Mare. I'm not entirely sure why (perhaps it's the left-over mariachi band from Un Canadian Errant ), except that the story it tells is so sweet, and the images evoked by the lyrics are so clear. And, I just feel like I'm sitting around a campfire with Leonard while he sings it!

Runners up are Sing Another Song Boys and Joan of Arc. These have been going through my head alot lately. (I can't get the "la-la-la's" from J of A out of my head, I could sing them all day!)

Famous Blue Raincoat.

"The Window" is absolutely gorgeous. I only came across it recently and keep listening to it and thinking of words from it. I particularly love the phrase " tangle of matter and ghost", that's what every human being is, really !