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About

Genius Annotation

From the 1984 album Various Positions, this classic by poet Leonard Cohen generated much debate and discussions as to the meaning and the background of the song.

While different people find different meanings, Leonard Cohen himself describes his motive for writing this fantastic piece –

‘Dance Me to the End Of Love’ … it’s curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that’s why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.“
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In 1994, a live version of the song was released as a CD promotional single b/w “Suzanne”.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

what is this song about?
Genius Answer

Despite sounding like a love song, Cohen says his inspiration for “Dance Me to the End of Love”:

came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.

Is this song referring to the holocaust.
Genius Answer

Read the song bio and annotations!

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