I’m Your Man

That was a song in which I said to myself, “What would I do to be accepted by the woman and what does the woman want? What does a woman want from a man?” Many men have addressed this problem: what kind of a man does she want me to be? And it’s only the hunger for the woman, the necessity to live in her presence, whether this is love or not. We can’t fool ourselves. We can’t think that we can escape each other’s presence. Whatever the relationships between men and women are – how good, how bad, clear, unclear, modern, postmodern, whatever, chauvinistic, emancipated – the fact is we are each other’s content: the woman is the man’s content and the man is the woman’s content. We cannot live without each other. ~Leonard Cohen

As the title song of Cohen’s very popular 1988 album, “I’m Your Man” deserves a close look. The musical setting, the plaintive opening notes and Cohen’s gravely intonation of the heartfelt declarations of the verses make this one of the easiest songs to step into. The music belongs in a late night, nondescript dive whose single patron sits at the bar confiding his ruined heart to his drink while the music consoles him.

He mournfully reflects on the many promises once made to a woman he has lost and would now give anything to get back. The promises run the range from the romantic ideal to the naughty, from the accommodating to the supportive. They ring true from the male perspective. They are promises made in earnest and in all honesty when offered, but are difficult to keep. They are also the promises women want to hear and, if accepted as authentic, allow for the binding of heart to heart. It is the essential attraction of man to woman and woman to man which Cohen is pointing to, the foundation on which the commitment to a relationship rests. It is this sentiment which echoes so loudly in the simple, final line of each verse: “I’m your man”.

Although the promises were made and accepted, at some point the connection has been broken and the woman lost. It is in this tormented condition – powerless to unravel the binding and still subject to its demands and urgency – which speaker finds himself: “Ah, the moon’s too bright/The chain’s too tight/The beast won’t go to sleep”. I dare say there isn’t a man alive who hasn’t experienced this feeling to one degree or another. Fully aware that: “A man never got a woman back/Not by begging on his knees”, nonetheless the desperate yearning plays itself out:

Or I’d crawl to you, baby,
And I’d fall at your feet
And I’d howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I’d claw at your heart
And I’d tear at your sheet
I’d say….’Please!’

And, of course, this cry of the heart comes from the same place as the promises made: “I’m your man”.

There is no resolution of this state of affairs within the song. The speaker returns to his lonely recital of the list of promises made as the music consoles him and his hopeless despair once again.

This is one of those songs where the music and the words combine with that gravelly, half conversational, half singing voice of Cohen’s for a truly effective presentation. It is an open invitation to share the emotion, thought and suffering of a dimension of love that can resonate in all of us.