Sonic Sorcery: Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows"

As one of the great writers of the 20th century, we could analyse Leonard Cohen songs all day (we peered into his uncanny ability to deeply link music and lyrics in "A Peak at Prosody", which takes a close look at "Hallelujah" as well as other songs that employ the technique).

Today, let's briefly examine Cohen's classic "Everybody Knows" - a song from Leonard's 1988 album "I'm Your Man". 

The song barely charted at its release, but was almost immediately a hit for film makers. Cohen's version was used in the 1994 film, "Exotica", and it was covered for many more films - from 1990's "Pump It Up" (covered by Concrete Blonde) to 2017's "Justice League" (covered by Sigrid).

So, let's break down what's happening with the lyrics first, and then the music.

From a structural perspective, "Everybody Knows" relies on a form of excess repetition known as anaphora - its polar opposite, I suppose, is epistrophe, akin to the way rhyme and alliteration are opposites. This manner of repetition (a technique later employed by Alanis Morissette's Grammy nominated #1 hit "Thank U", for one example, or "I Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash, or even - albeit more subtly - "Every Breath You Take" by The Police").

Whether its Charles Dickens' "...it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." or Maya Angelou's "You may shoot me with your words / You may cut me with your eyes / You may kill me with your hatefulness / But still, like air, I’ll rise....”, anaphora is a powerful technique. 

In Cohen's hands:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

So he manages to employ both anaphora AND a standard rhyme scheme. No small feat.

In terms of content, each verse seems to address a different topic (similar to what we saw in "Hallelujah"). For example, verse one (above) and two examine from a social stance, while verse three and four intensely personal ("...everybody knows that you love me, baby....") and touch on subjects such as infidelity and drug use, then moves on to dystopian futures and religion....all in a single song.

The melodies also employ this excessive repetition, which keeps the focus firmly on what Cohen has to say. Well, somewhat firmly, as the supporting music has a few surprises as far as the harmonic support.

The chord progression starts as a standard minor approach (the original recording is in C#m, but the subsequent live version are in Dm, leading me to believe the original may have simply been tuned down 1/2/ step for the recording). We'll look at it in Dm.

"Everybody Knows" Cohen (1988)

verse

Dm - - - /Dm - - - /Bb - - - /Bb - - - /

Dm - - - /Dm - - - /Bb - - - /Bb - - - /

Gm - - - /Am - - - /C - - - /Dm - - - /

Eb - - - /A7 - - - /Dm - - - /Dm - - - /

chorus

F - - - /F - - - /C - - - /C - - - /

Dm - - - /C - Bb - /F - - - /F - - - /

We can see he falls right into a standard approach for the chorus, but the verse definitely has an unexpected spin with the Eb chord.

In Dm (aka, key of F), the chords are F, Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm, Edim....but Cohen substitutes the E diminished chord with an Eb major chord. 

Relative to the Dm, this is a flat 2 - total phrygian flavor for just a moment in time.

He uses this tension to push to the A7 chord (rather than the diatonically "correct" Am we saw just 4 measures earlier), which is a strong push back to the Dm (again, the same "false cadence" or "andelusian cadence" we saw in his song "Hallelujah").

How else might we examine these borrowed chords?

Rather than in relation to the Dm, let's view it as it stands to the key of F. In this light, Cohen has, with the use of the Eb chord, shifted from a standard major key to an F Mixolydian (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 b7), if only for a moment, and then uses the A7 to move us forcefully back to Dm.

Of course, when we discuss chord substitutions and use terms like "borrowed chord", it leaves one gaping hole in our analysis. To wit: What chord was he replacing with the Eb chord?

We'll discuss those possibilities (two obvious options are the E diminished [think 2-5-1] or the C) and the mechanics of these moves in another article, but for now you may want to experiment with this approach by pondering the following suggestion:

version 1

verse

Am - - - /F - - - /G - - - /Am - - - /

Am - - - /F - - - /G - - - /Am - - - /

chorus

C - - - /F - - - /G - - - /Am - - - /

C - - - /F - - - /G - - - /Am - - - /

version 2

verse

Am - - - /F - - - /G - - - /Am - - - /

Am - - - /F - - - /Bb - - - /Am - - - /

chorus

C - - - /F - - - /G - - - /Am - - - /

C - - - /F - - - /E7 - - - /Am - - - /

Enjoy!

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