“First We Take Manhattan” by Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen cut his own "First We Take Manhattan" for I'm Your Man in 1988, after Jennifer Warnes had got there first on Famous Blue Raincoat, her 1986 album of his songs. The Canadian produced it himself and sings lead, with Anjani Thomas adding vocals, Jeff Fisher arranging, François Deschamps and Ian Terry recording and Frank Wolf mixing.

The words are oblique and loaded, full of prayer, birthmarks and signs in the sky, and critics have read end-times prophecy into them: Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone heard a menacing picture of society breaking down and a terrorist settling scores, the Telegraph's Robert Sandall tied it to the Soviet Union's last days, and the Guardian's Ben Hewitt pictured Cohen plotting world domination like a Bond villain. Cohen, backstage in 1988, said it meant just what it said: a terrorist song, a response to terrorism.

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