Dance Me To The End Of Love | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
| Gm | Gm |
||: Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm | D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm :||
La la, la la la la…
Verse 1
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin.
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in.
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove.
| D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm |
Dance me to the end of love.
| D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm |
Dance me to the end of love.
Verse 2
Oh, let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone.
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon.
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of.
Dance me to the end of love.
Dance me to the end of love.
Instrumental 1
||: F | F | Gm | Gm :||
Verse 3
Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on.
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long.
We’re both of us beneath our love, we’re both of us above.
Dance me to the end of love.
Dance me to the end of love.
Verse 4 (one line shorter)
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born.
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn.
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn.
| D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm |
Dance me to the end of love.
Instrumental 2
||: F | F | Gm | Gm :||
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm | D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm |
La la, la la la la…
Verse 5 (one line longer)
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin.
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in.
Touch me with your naked hand, touch me with your glove.
Dance me to the end of love.
Dance me to the end of love.
Dance me to the end of love.
Dance Me To The End Of Love Chords: Learn the progressions
Dance Me To The End Of Love provides an excellent opportunity for us to work on incorporating bass lines when comping.
This is best described using TAB, more on this later, let’s start with the chord progressions.
The intro (and later also the second instrumental section) is like a condensed version of a verse so let’s start with this. In the key of Gm, we move II – VI – IIIx – VI, like this:
||: Cm (II) | Cm | Gm (VI) | Gm |
| D7 (IIIx) | D7 | Gm (VI) | Gm :||
The verse repeats Cm and Gm three times before we go to D7.
I think it’s important to recognize how this is essentially a blues progression. The most common blues 12 bar starts on chord I, goes up to IV, then back again before the turnaround, for example, Texas Flood.
In minor it works the same way, just using chords VI and II before the turnaround, for example, The Thrill is Gone.
However, some blues progressions go straight to the IV chord, for example, Clapton‘s version of Rollin’ and Tumblin’.
For Dance Me To The End Of Love’s chords, we’re essentially doing this, but in minor, here’s a verse, see it as a minor blues with two turnarounds:
||: Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
| D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm |
| D7 | D7 | Gm | Gm :||
The instrumental section starts with going to chord V, like this:
||: F (V) | F | Gm (VI) | Gm :||
Play along to the original recording with short on-the-beat strums for beats 2 and 4 using the chords and lyrics above.
Should you want to play with Madeleine Peyroux‘s version instead, transpose it all down a tone to the key of Fm.
Either way, Dance Me To The End Of Love’s chords are crying out for the bass alternating between root and 5th.
You’ll see this most clearly with TAB, here’s a link to that part of the lesson: Dance Me To The End Of Love – Guitar Lesson with TAB.
A simple chord chart will do once you’ve looked at the TAB and got to terms with the alternating bass. Here’s one I made for you.
Dance Me To The End Of Love Chord Chart | PDF + iReal Pro
Should you want to download this chart, here’s a PDF: Dance Me To The End Of Love Chord Chart PDF.
This chord chart was created using iReal Pro, here’s a link to that file: Dance Me To The End Of Love iReal Pro.
Using this and the iRealPro app, you can change the key. This makes it easy to go to Madeleine Peyroux”s version (Key of Fm) in an instant, should it turn out that’s the version everyone else in the band wants to play.
Dance Me To The End Of Love is inspired by a Greek dance and the Holocaust!
Leonard Cohen‘s Dance Me To The End Of Love was released in 1984 as a single from the album Various Positions.
The music video portrays old couples in a very powerful way, the lyrics are said to be inspired by the Holocaust, disguised as a love song.
The line “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin” is taken from the fact that whilst the Jews were burnt, the Nazis would have a string quartet playing.
The chord progression is the same as used for the Greek dance Hasapiko, Greece being a place Leonard stayed in when he wrote Bird on the Wire in the late ’60s.
Covered by many, it is perhaps Madeleine Peyroux who best made it her own on her album Careless Love (2005).
Dance Me To The End Of Love Chords | Related Pages
Dance Me To The End Of Love | Guitar Lesson + TAB
With this guitar lesson, you can learn to play Dance Me To The End Of Love by Leonard Cohen using TAB and chord analysis.
| Cm | Cm | Gm | Gm |
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin…
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
Leonard Cohen tunes
Following a career as a novelist and poet for over a decade, Leonard Cohen released his debut album in 1967.
His best tunes include Suzanne, Bird on the Wire, Famous Blue Raincoat, Chelsea Hotel #2, Hallelujah, Dance Me To The End Of Love, and So Long, Marianne.
Leonard Cohen on the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about Dance Me To The End Of Love chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
