There’s just no getting around it: writing about Leonard Cohen is an intimidating proposition. Trying to put into words the magic of Cohen’s art is like trying to play a guitar solo about Jimi Hendrix. The most celebrated and identifiably literary figure in all of rock and roll, Cohen has, with his music, permitted us a glimpse into the mind of one of the most astute and beloved communicators of the human condition since Baudelaire or Rimbaud.
By the time Cohen released his first album, 1967′s Songs Of Leonard Cohen, he was already 33 years old and a published poet and novelist of some repute in his native Canada. At an age when most careers in music are (or should be) drawing to conclusions both tragic and temporal, Cohen was just getting started. Over the years his reputation as a singer and songwriter would eclipse that of his reputation as a poet, though Cohen actively published books throughout his four decades of music making.
Cohen is an irresistibly compelling character; no rock and roll sage has so ably served two masters. Contrast Cohen’s Jekyl — erudite, monastic, earnest — with his Hyde — lecherous, cruel, hedonistic. Father, philanderer, or malcontent, he’s your man. His lyrics are a series of diamond-flashes, full of malevolence, veracity, and moral passion, as likely to be threaded with Christian allegory as they are to contain allusions to blowjobs and orgies.
But great poetry alone does not necessarily make for great music, and Cohen is no mere poet. While it would be difficult to imagine a person who is not in some way already amenable to the charms of rhythmic verse getting much out of his music, Cohen’s keen ear for melody and arrangement is as deft as his eye for sparkling detail. His always ancient-sounding voice has transformed over the years from a yearning, spellbinding tenor to a dispassionate rattle, like a teacup being gently dragged over cement. If deep and private engagement with Leonard Cohen’s music has never made you cry, your blood type may very well be ’ice water.’
The first three Leonard Cohen albums, like the first four Velvet Underground albums, are very nearly perfect. He could have stopped at 1970′s brilliant Songs Of Love And Hate and earned a place alongside Nick Drake and Townes Van Zandt among the sadsack hipster elite, but like most great artists of the 20th century, Cohen was a maverick, a risk taker of the highest order, and was never content to rest on his laurels as some earnest godfather of goth. He might have merely gone down in history as the French Canadian perv who wrote folk songs about erections and scalpels and raincoats and Joan of Arc, but his grasp exceeded such paltry distinctions. The ensuing decades saw the mercurial Cohen spending five years in seclusion at a monastery becoming an ordained monk, discovering the wonders of drum machines and MIDI programming, and catastrophically collaborating with legendary lunatic and firearms enthusiast Phil Spector, among other feats.
If the following list is a little light on Cohen’s later music, this is more a testament to the magisterial greatness of his early work than a rejection of latter-day masterpieces like “Because Of” and “Alexandra Leaving.” Many readers will balk at the exclusion of “Hallelujah,” a song that has taken on legendary status mostly due to its popularity in coffeehouses, college campuses, and American Idol, the result of an admittedly pretty good cover by the late Jeff Buckley and a better one by John Cale, among far too many others. The ubiquity of the tune has, over the years, lent it an undue reputation as a Cohen masterwork. It has this in common with the oft-covered “Suzanne,” another song many will claim has been omitted from this list egregiously. Let’s just say that this is merely a Leonard Cohen top 10, and there are about forty songs tied for No. 11.
To declare oneself a songwriter — or even an appreciator of songs — while remaining unaware of even the most minor of Cohen’s work is a bit like declaring oneself a chef having never successfully scrambled an egg. The devilishly debonair Buddhist Canadian Jew with the voice that sighs eternally has written some of the most beautifully melancholic and affecting songs in the history of recorded music. Here are 10 of them.10. “Tower Of Song” from I’m Your Man (1988)
By the time Cohen released his first album, 1967′s Songs Of Leonard Cohen, he was already 33 years old and a published poet and novelist of some repute in his native Canada. At an age when most careers in music are (or should be) drawing to conclusions both tragic and temporal, Cohen was just getting started. Over the years his reputation as a singer and songwriter would eclipse that of his reputation as a poet, though Cohen actively published books throughout his four decades of music making.
Cohen is an irresistibly compelling character; no rock and roll sage has so ably served two masters. Contrast Cohen’s Jekyl — erudite, monastic, earnest — with his Hyde — lecherous, cruel, hedonistic. Father, philanderer, or malcontent, he’s your man. His lyrics are a series of diamond-flashes, full of malevolence, veracity, and moral passion, as likely to be threaded with Christian allegory as they are to contain allusions to blowjobs and orgies.
But great poetry alone does not necessarily make for great music, and Cohen is no mere poet. While it would be difficult to imagine a person who is not in some way already amenable to the charms of rhythmic verse getting much out of his music, Cohen’s keen ear for melody and arrangement is as deft as his eye for sparkling detail. His always ancient-sounding voice has transformed over the years from a yearning, spellbinding tenor to a dispassionate rattle, like a teacup being gently dragged over cement. If deep and private engagement with Leonard Cohen’s music has never made you cry, your blood type may very well be ’ice water.’
The first three Leonard Cohen albums, like the first four Velvet Underground albums, are very nearly perfect. He could have stopped at 1970′s brilliant Songs Of Love And Hate and earned a place alongside Nick Drake and Townes Van Zandt among the sadsack hipster elite, but like most great artists of the 20th century, Cohen was a maverick, a risk taker of the highest order, and was never content to rest on his laurels as some earnest godfather of goth. He might have merely gone down in history as the French Canadian perv who wrote folk songs about erections and scalpels and raincoats and Joan of Arc, but his grasp exceeded such paltry distinctions. The ensuing decades saw the mercurial Cohen spending five years in seclusion at a monastery becoming an ordained monk, discovering the wonders of drum machines and MIDI programming, and catastrophically collaborating with legendary lunatic and firearms enthusiast Phil Spector, among other feats.
If the following list is a little light on Cohen’s later music, this is more a testament to the magisterial greatness of his early work than a rejection of latter-day masterpieces like “Because Of” and “Alexandra Leaving.” Many readers will balk at the exclusion of “Hallelujah,” a song that has taken on legendary status mostly due to its popularity in coffeehouses, college campuses, and American Idol, the result of an admittedly pretty good cover by the late Jeff Buckley and a better one by John Cale, among far too many others. The ubiquity of the tune has, over the years, lent it an undue reputation as a Cohen masterwork. It has this in common with the oft-covered “Suzanne,” another song many will claim has been omitted from this list egregiously. Let’s just say that this is merely a Leonard Cohen top 10, and there are about forty songs tied for No. 11.
To declare oneself a songwriter — or even an appreciator of songs — while remaining unaware of even the most minor of Cohen’s work is a bit like declaring oneself a chef having never successfully scrambled an egg. The devilishly debonair Buddhist Canadian Jew with the voice that sighs eternally has written some of the most beautifully melancholic and affecting songs in the history of recorded music. Here are 10 of them.10. “Tower Of Song” from I’m Your Man (1988)
Any writer who has ever pored over a verb choice, any poet who has ever spent an entire evening excruciating over the minutiae of a simile, owes it to him or herself to listen to the magnificent “Tower Of Song” and be reminded that even the greats are occasionally burdened by the mutation that is the creative muse. Over an unhurried rhumba that sounds vaguely like a Casio preset, and female background vocals of the ’shoop-de-doop’ and ’doo-run-run’ variety, this tale of martyrdom, madness, and rime is full of wan admonishments that convey — often within the same line — both the blessing and the curse of artistic creation’s binge and purge.
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