Songfacts®:

• This seven-and-a-half-minute confessional finds a weary hedonistic Cohen owning up to sins and searching for redemption. "Tell me again when the angels are panting and scratching at the door to get in," he intones. Cohen is Jewish, and he has drawn from Jewish religious and cultural imagery throughout his career most famously on "Hallelujah." The singer-poet has also been involved with Buddhism since the 1970s, and in 1994 he retreated to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles, beginning what became five years of seclusion at the center. Cohen was ordained a Rinzi Zen Buddhist monk in 1996, but is still an observant Jew who keeps the Sabbath, refusing to give concerts on Friday nights.
• Cohen recorded an early version of this track back in 2007.