Many musicians have called the Chelsea Hotel home. Perhaps there is something in the water. Maybe it’s the wayfaring spirits of artists that are stuck there. Whatever the magical source, the Chelsea has inspired a number of musicians to make awe-inspiring work.
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Find three of the best songs that reference the Chelsea Hotel below.
1. Chelsea Hotel #2 – Leonard Cohen
Perhaps the most famous song about the Chelsea Hotel comes from Leonard Cohen. “Chelsea Hotel #2” tells the story of Cohen meeting Janis Joplin in the iconic building. As the story goes, Joplin was looking for Kris Kristofferson when she ran into Cohen.
“She wasn’t looking for me, she was looking for Kris Kristofferson; I wasn’t looking for her, I was looking for Brigitte Bardot,” Cohen once explained. “But we fell into each other’s arms through some process of elimination.”
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Cohen tells that story in the lyrics with acute detail, leaning hard into his vagabond reputation. And clenching your fist for the ones like us / Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty / You fixed yourself, you said, “well, never mind / We are ugly but we have the music,” he sings.
Find the full story behind “Chelsea Hotel #2,” HERE.
2. “Chelsea Morning” – Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell captured the hotel in a way only she could in 1966 with her track, “Chelsea Morning.” Through Mitchell’s eyes, the towering building is seen in a soft, romantic light as she sings, Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning / And the first thing that I heard / Was a song outside my window / And the traffic wrote the words.
“I wrote that in Philadelphia after some girls who worked in this club where I was playing found all this colored slag glass in an alley,” Mitchell once explained (per Songfacts). “We collected a lot of it and built these glass mobiles with copper wire and coat hangers. I took mine back to New York and put them in my window on West 16th Street in the Chelsea District. The sun would hit the mobile and send these moving colors all around the room.
“As a young girl, I found that to be a thing of beauty,” she continued. “There’s even a reference to the mobile in the song. It was a very young and lovely time… before I had a record deal. I think it’s a very sweet song, but I don’t think of it as part of my best work. To me, most of those early songs seem like the work of an ingenue.”
3. “Sara” – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan wrote about the Chelsea Hotel a little less plainly than Cohen and Mitchell. Dylan referenced the hotel in a song about his ex-wife, Sara Dylan. In the midst of meditating on the breakdown of their relationship, Dylan sings Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel / Writing “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for you.
“Sara” is considered one of Dylan’s most poignant love songs. Dylan, a notoriously private man, made a very public display of affection for his wife on the brink of their divorce. Few Dylan songs are as intimate and candid.
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