First We Take Manhattan by Leonard Cohen

Tonight’s song is a towering live rendition of First We Take Manhattan, from Leonard Cohen’s Live in London era, a period when his late-career renaissance was in full, breathtaking bloom. Originally written in the late 1980s and made famous in part through Jennifer Warnes’ interpretation, this song has only grown more ominous, more prophetic, and somehow more tender with age. By the time Cohen brought it to the London stage in the late 2000s, and onward into those final tours, it had transformed into a dark, swaggering hymn of resolve.

Cohen, already a poet and novelist before he was a recording artist, always treated the stage as a kind of secular chapel. In this live version, his voice—lower, grainier, almost subterranean—turns the song into a slow-burning manifesto. The band stretches the groove, the backing singers add a gospel-tinged urgency, and the whole arrangement underscores the song’s blend of political paranoia and private longing.

“They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom / For trying to change the system from within.”

What once sounded like a stylish piece of 80s noir now feels frighteningly current, and yet Cohen delivers it with warmth, wit, and that wry half-smile you can almost hear between the lines. It is both protest and prayer, both threat and love letter.

Let this live performance be your soundtrack today. Listen now to our song of the day, and if it moves you, show your love for music and share justadailysong.com with your friends.