I'm Your Man (Leonard Cohen album)
| I'm Your Man | ||||
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| Studio album by Leonard Cohen | ||||
| Released | February 2, 1988 | |||
| Recorded | August - November 1987 | |||
| Studio | Studio Tempo, Montréal (Quebec), Rock Steady, Los Angeles (United States) |
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| Genre | Folk | |||
| Length | 40:41 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Leonard Cohen, Roscoe Beck, Jean-Michel Reusser, Michel Robidoux | |||
| Leonard Cohen chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | A− |
| Rolling Stone |  |
| Pitchfork | 9.5/10 |
I'm Your Man is the eighth studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in 1988. The album marked Cohen's further move to a more modern sound, with many songs having a synth-oriented production.
I'm Your Man was recorded in Los Angeles and Montreal and employed four producers: Roscoe Beck, Jean-Michel Reusser, Michel Robidoux, and Cohen himself. The LP would give Cohen an updated, contemporary 80s sound, featuring songs composed primarily on keyboards and delivered in Cohen's increasingly gravelly rasp. Cohen's sound had started to evolve on his last album Various Positions but it is more fully realized on this LP. In his book Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life, biographer Anthony Reynolds observes, "...in almost every respect I'm Your Man marked not so much a progression but an evolutionary leap forward...Cohen's new musical canvas was rich and wide, with its bold and bald use of sequencers, drum machines, synclavier and synths all mixed exotically with the lingering eastern European textures of the bouzouki, the oud, and the heart rending (old Russian school) violin." Cohen felt his singing had improved as well, telling Adrian Deevoy of The Q Magazine in 1991, “Sometimes I can’t stand the sound of my voice. It went through periods. The first and second records it sounded right. Then I stopped being able to find the right voice for the songs. The songs were good and the intention was good but the voice wasn’t really up to it. I lost it for a while. When I did Various Positions it was coming back and when I got to I’m Your Man I was in full stride.” In 1997 he reiterated to Nigel Williamson of Uncut, "On I'm Your Man, my voice had settled and I didn't feel ambiguous about it. I could at last deliver the songs with the authority and intensity required."
The album includes some of the singer's most popular songs and concert staples, including the single "Ain't No Cure For Love," "First We Take Manhattan," "Tower of Song," and "Everybody Knows," which was a collaboration with Cohen's backup singer Sharon Robinson. "Everybody Knows" is known for its somber tone and repetition of the title at the beginning of most verses. Featuring phrases such as "Everybody knows that the dice are loaded" and "Everybody knows that the good guys lost", the song has been variously described by critics as "bitterly pessimistic" yet funny, or, more strongly, a "bleak prophecy about the end of the world as we know it." The lyrics include references to AIDS, social problems, and relationship and religion issues. The album's opening track, "First We Take Manhattan" (originally called "In Old Berlin"), deals with geo-political ideas, specifically extremism, as he explained himself in a backstage interview:
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