A SINGER MUST DIE
Album : New Skin For The Old Ceremony

Leonard Cohen - 1974
Jennifer Warnes


Now the courtroom
is quiet, but who will confess.
Is it true you
betrayed us? The answer is Yes.
Then read me the
list of the crimes that are mine,
I will ask for the
mercy that you love to decline.
And all the ladies
go moist, and the judge has no choice,
a singer must die
for the lie in his voice.
And I thank you, I
thank you for doing your duty,
you keepers of
truth, you guardians of beauty.
Your vision is
right, my vision is wrong,
I'm sorry for
smudging the air with my song.

Oh, the night it
is thick, my defences are hid
in the clothes of
a woman I would like to forgive,
in the rings of
her silk, in the hinge of her thighs,
where I have to go
begging in beauty's disguise.
Oh goodnight,
goodnight, my night after night,
my night after
night, after night, after night, after night, after
night.

I am so afraid
that I listen to you,
your sun glassed
protectors they do that to you.
It's their ways to
detain, their ways to disgrace,
their knee in your
balls and their fist in your face.
Yes and long live
the state by whoever it's made,
sir, I didn't see
nothing, I was just getting home late.



(Contributed by Andy & Mogg, & Carlene Bogle - July 2002)