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I've listened to it during a million (full)moonlit nights and sung some of its songs aloud again and again (and then some)! The song was further covered by Antony and the Johnsons frontwoman Antony Hegarty for a 2005 documentary, I'm Your Man. It marked not only his turn to a modern sound and use of synthesizers (particularly on the opening track), but also, after the harmonies and backing vocals from Jennifer Warnes on the previous Recent Songs (1979), an even greater contribution from Warnes, who is credited equally to Cohen as vocalist on all of the tracks.

The album was recorded at Quadrasonic Sound in New York in the summer of 1983 with Leanne Ungar engineering. Cohen, like very few others, has always appreciated that love is at least as much comedy as tragedy. Cohen wrote around 80 draft verses for the tune, with one writing session at the Royalton Hotel in New York where he was reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, banging his head on the floor. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin", meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation.

After recording Recent Songs, Cohen did not record again for five years and published no new writing until Book of Mercy in 1984.

As usual it is Cohen's strong lyrics (more poetry really) and the quality of his voice that holds the simple backing tunes together.LC has sung this live and it can be found on the sublime Live In London, but nowhere has he sung it with such restrained grace as here.