If there was an ultimate Agent of Ishq it was Leonard Cohen. This week he left us for that Tower of Song in the sky. But he also left us an incredible tapestry of poetic desire, a philosophy rooted in the erotic, a spiritual understanding of life drawn from love, sex and relationships.
As a tribute to his sensuality and wisdom we asked all the agents on twitter and Facebook to help us create today’s Sexy Saturday Songs – so here it is. Songs people loved and why they loved them. Goes without saying, they are sexiness itself and that needs little explication!
1. Famous Blue Raincoat
@Swati Bhattacharya: I have a Leonard Cohen song for every love of mine. But the song thats just him and me and I play it a lot this time of the year in Delhi is "famous blue raincoat".
@TowHarmony: For all its grace and tenderness.
@pookipedia: I love his gentle take on friendship, love and adultery.
@nidsitis: 'Famous Blue Raincoat' for tenderness.
2. The Ballard Of The Absent Mare
@sridala: I taught a poetry workshop recently where I used ballads by poets as well as songwriters and this was among the songs I chose. It's not a 'regular' Cohen song but you listen to it and it's lyric and musical progression is instantly familiar. The words, read or heard, bring me to tears now but even before he died it made me want to throw my hands out and hug everything in reach.
I mean, just listen to this genius:
'So he binds himself
To the galloping mare
And she binds herself
To the rider there
And there is no space
But there's left and right
And there is no time
But there's day and night
And he leans on her neck
And he whispers low
"Whither thou goest I will go"
And they turn as one
And they head for the plain
No need for the whip
Ah, no need for the rein
Now the clasp of this union
Who fastens it tight?
Who snaps it asunder
The very next night
Some say the rider
Some say the mare
Or that love's like the smoke
Beyond all repair.'
3. Dance Me To The End Of Love
@Chinmayi Shalya: Deeply seductive poetry and rhythm. Oh it is an enchanting proposition, dancing to the end of love.
@nidsitis: I felt this morning like singing Dance Me To The End of Love to my beautiful doggess, Layla. :)
Especially, "Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in". Wish she did.
@shreyilaanasuya: 'Dance me to the end of love' for incandescent beauty.
4. Chelseas Hotel No.2
@AgentsOfIshq Supposed to be about Leonard Cohen's encounter with Janis Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel the song is free-floating, piercing, thrilling with its casual "giving me head on the unmade bed" intimacy and its anthem like line - we are ugly, but we have the music!
5. If I Didn’t Have Your Love
@TowHarmony: Current favourite is 'If I didn't have your love'. I love this line- 'And no one that you hurt could ever heal'.
6. I’m Your Man
@Saumya Agarwal: I'm Your Man, for the mind-blowing love poetry.
@anishapadhee: I'm your man - gives us (un)realistic expectations haha!
7. The Gypsy Wife
@ranyamanivannan: The Gypsy's Wife, for its wild woman, the Salome-Kali dancing with a head on the threshing floor, between light & dark.
8. Suzanne
@nidsitis: Love Suzanne. One of those songs that moves you to tears.
@shreyilaanasuya: 'Suzanne' because it was the first song of his that I heard and loved.
9. So Long Marianne
@nidsitis: So long Marianne tugs at all my heartstrings.
10. Who By Fire
@shreyailaanasuya: Who by fire' because, well, it's incredible, please listen to it. Ok, will stop now.
11. Hallelujah
@boat_of_bones Hallelujah' because that's what I imagine sex with someone you love would sound like, if it were music.
@shreyilaanasuya: 'Hallelujah' for being a hymn and a dirge at the same time.
@Saumya Agarwal: Hallelujah, for the melody (and even the words).
12. Take this waltz
@shreyilaanasuya: 'Take this waltz' for the incredible worldbuilding.
13. Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye
@Jabeen Merchant: 'Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye' for the heartache.
14. Ain’t No Cure For Love
@Jabeen Merchant: 'There Ain't No Cure For Love' for the masti...
15. One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong
@pardoevi my favourite for its psychedelic sense of love's ability to make us feel fucked-up, misbehave, its contradictions which make each passing certainty feel like forever and real in the moment, the wretched loneliness recounted with dry laughter in "the room just filled up with mosquitoes, they'd heard that my body was free."
16. A Thousand Kisses Deep
@shreyilaanasuya: A Thousand Kisses Deep' cause he kept writing new lyrics for it.
Tune in to the playlist of all of Crowdsourced's Sexy Saturday Songs here.
