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Thanks for the Dance

album by Leonard Cohen

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ68215737 ↗
Source-derived summary

Thanks for the Dance is the fifteenth and final studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released posthumously through Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings on November 22, 2019. It is the first release following Cohen's death in November 2016, and includes contributions from various musicians, such as Daniel Lanois, Beck, Jennifer Warnes, Damien Rice and Leslie Feist. The song "The Goal" was released with the announcement of the album, on September 20, 2019.

Described as a "continuation" of Cohen's previous studio album, You Want It Darker (2016), the album's vocal tracks were recorded during the same sessions, with Cohen's son and album producer Adam Cohen noting that the album should not be considered an album of "discarded songs or B sides".

Background

The songs on the album comprise "sketches" left over from the sessions for Cohen's final studio album You Want It Darker that were finished by Cohen's son Adam Cohen in a "garage near his father's old house". Regarding the tracks, Adam Cohen noted: "Had we had more time and had [Leonard] been more robust, we would have gotten to them. [We had] conversations about what instrumentation and what feelings he wanted the completed work to evoke – sadly, the fact that I would be completing them without him was given."

The title song, "Thanks for the Dance", was originally recorded by Anjani for her 2007 album Blue Alert, produced and written by Cohen, and composed by Anjani, while Cohen's own version of the song was recorded later.

Some songs were years in the making in Cohen's notebooks and home studio. "The Night of Santiago" is an adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca's poem "The Unfaithful Housewife". Probably started at the same time as Cohen's 1986 single "Take This Waltz" and never finished, the lyrics were much later published in Book of Longing as "The Faithless Wife".

Editorial summary

“Thanks for the Dance” enters the record as album by Leonard Cohen. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thanks, Dance and album can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2019, 2016, 2007, 1986—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2019. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Thanks, Dance and album.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Thanks for the Dance” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Thanks, Dance and album provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q68215737. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2016, 2007 and 1986.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Thanks for the Dance”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Thanks for the Dance primary sources, Thanks for the Dance archive and Thanks research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Thanks for the Dance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.