Time Out New York's #10 NYC song...

CHELSEA HOTEL NO. 2 (Leonard Cohen)
Famously, Leonard Cohen introduced this song live with a reference to Janis Joplin, implying the song was written about she and Cohen's short affair in the Hotel Chelsea. Despite Cohen's later apology for this statement, it has forever colored the rich, fissured narrative of the song. Unlike many writers who turn poems into songs, Cohen considers them entirely separate, but this is certainly one of his more poetic songs. Just listen to his emphatic voice hushing the music that seems to play only as a background for his baritone as he tells the story of a tender, too brief romance. Hotel Chelsea,that gritty soul of New York's bohemian artists, is the setting of "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" and it is evoked in all its messy beauty, from the unmade bed to the limousines waiting in the street.  Read More

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, 
you were talking so brave and so sweet, 
giving me head on the unmade bed, 
while the limousines wait in the street. 
Those were the reasons and that was New York, 
we were running for the money and the flesh. 
And that was called love for the workers in song 
probably still is for those of them left.