The Album
Released in February 1988, I'm Your Man marked a decisive turn in Leonard Cohen's career, trading the spare acoustic guitar of his earlier records for synthesizers, drum machines and a wry, world-weary baritone that had deepened over the preceding decade. Written and recorded in Montreal, Los Angeles and Paris, the songs were largely composed on keyboards, and collaborators such as Jeff Fisher brought a cinematic, almost noirish production sheen to tracks like “First We Take Manhattan” and “Jazz Police”. The album opens with a brooding fantasy of vengeance and renewal and closes with “Tower of Song”, one of Cohen's most quoted self-portraits of the aging troubadour. “Everybody Knows”, co-written with Sharon Robinson, became one of his most covered and sampled songs, its cynical litany of societal hypocrisy proving durable well beyond its era. “Take This Waltz” sets Cohen's translation of a Federico García Lorca poem to music, linking the record to his lifelong engagement with poetry. The album became Cohen's most commercially successful to date in several markets and is now regarded by critics and longtime listeners as a career-redefining comeback, reestablishing him as a vital songwriter for a new generation while retaining the literary density and dark humor of his earlier work.