Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan
Alright, so let's begin with the 1988 Leonard Cohen hit from the album "I'm Your Man", "First We Take Manhattan". This song has been quite heavy on my rotation and my iTunes most played list for two key reasons:
1) It features on the soundtrack to the film adaptation of Alan Moore's classic graphic novel "Watchmen" (although it's not included on the official film soundtrack, and My Chemical Romance's cover of "Desolation Row" was? Where's the justice?)
2) It's bollocking awesome.
Yes, it's an awesome song, hear it for yourself:
You may have noticed the lyric to which I am referring, as it repeats throughout the song fairly often. The gist of the song is clear enough, with Cohen's protagonist considering themselves a revolutionary determined to change the world. However, his plan to take over the world seems a little short-sighted in that it consists of the following:
Yes, Leonard's plan for world domination is to take Manhattan, followed immediately by Berlin. However, Cohen neglects to mention the plan AFTER Manhattan and Berlin fall to his (presumably well-organised) private militia. Well, having said that, how organised a private militia, when concocting a plan for domination, ignores ALMOST EVERY CAPITAL CITY ON EARTH?
The song, however, is not just confusing in its main message, as exploring other lines will tell us. The earliest verse of the song is fairly straightforward and doesn't really confuse too much.
"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom,
For trying to change the system from within."
Makes sense to me, they caught him with a chipped Playstation 2, and made him watch "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" repeats for twenty years. Interesting that they had twenty years of repeats in 1988, but then the people he's referring to could have been executive producers on that series. We can never know for sure, that's how I see it.
"I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin."
Unless the birthmark looks like this, it's certain that he had other inspiration:
