Ain’t No Cure For Love (1988) – Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen 1988

I would class Ain’t No Cure for Love as a top tier Leonard Cohen song. Unlike the first song of his presented from the library, the restrained and melancholic A Thousand Kisses Deep  I would highly recommend anyone unfamiliar with Leonard’s music to try Ain’t No Cure on for size. Probably no other song of his bottles everything which he is so damn good at. Romance, poetry and devotional music – It’s is all here, but he’s at the peak of his powers doing it. You’ll note this song escalates in intensity as it progresses, until it climaxes (much like the act of making-love) and he’s all but spent.

I see you in the subway and I see you on the bus
I see you lying down with me, I see you waking up
I see your hand, I see your hair
Your bracelets and your brush
And I call to you, I call to you
But I don’t call soft enough
There ain’t no cure
There ain’t no cure
There ain’t no cure for love

Ain’t No Cure for Love is the second track on Cohen’s 1988 studio album I’m Your Man. According to Wikipedia his eight studio album was received as follows:
I’m Your Man was hailed by critics as a return to form. It was number 1 in Norway for 16 weeks. The album is silver in the UK and gold in Canada. In the original Rolling Stone review, David Browne called it “the first Cohen album that can be listened to during the daylight hours.” Tom Waits has named it one of his favourite albums. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

As the title suggests the theme of the song is a common and traditional one, but there isn’t much common or traditional in the output, on the contrary, I haven’t heard another song about ‘love’ like it. He mixes metaphors like pills and doctors in not finding the cure which reinforces the desperation he finds himself in not being able to escape these memories. The poetry is exquisite and full of lovely irony and his conviction and purposefulness in the vocal delivery is jarring. You can’t help but just be totally invested in it. It also has an anthemesque-theological substrate which is present in much of his work.

I walked into this empty church, I had no place else to go
When the sweetest voice I ever heard, whispered to my soul
I don’t need to be forgiven for loving you so much
It’s written in the scriptures
It’s written there in blood
I even heard the angels declare it from above
There ain’t no cure
There ain’t no cure
There ain’t no cure for love

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“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand