Comment by indigodaddy 10 months ago
Here's hoping that some HN users discover Leonard Cohen via this thread! For me it was life changing.. up there with the impact of Glass, Ali Farka Toure, the genre of Flamenco in and of itself, Simon Shaheen, Ennio Morricone, Goran Bregovic, Yann Tiersen, Islands, etc, on me. (although a lot of these aren't really related to each other, just sort of speaking to that "musical impact" on a person)
There was a recent article about hallelujah.
https://subtledigressions.substack.com/p/hallelujah-leonard-...
Nope, doesn't work with Yiddish/German language, too abrupt and hard. I would say Hebrew since it flows naturally with the word Hallelujah, but even that...
I dislike "Hallelujah" and am not aware of other songs from him. There's the line "Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally" in Pennyroyal Tea, which made me not judge him, and then there was Chris Cornell's daughter Toni singing it for her father [0], which was really moving.
What am I missing out on?
Pretty much every track is a hit, but here are some four random personal favourites:
- Everybody Knows https://youtu.be/Gxd23UVID7k
- First We Take Manhattan https://youtu.be/JTTC_fD598A
- Famous Blue Raincoat https://youtu.be/ohk3DP5fMCg
- Who By Fire https://youtu.be/ilGahIwQEQ0
Obviously too many to list here though, just pick up any album. By virtue of the fact that he was an incredible songwriter, his songs have such wonderful covers.
The Tori Amos cover of Famous Blue Raincoat [0] is one of my favourites, and this cover of Who by Fire by PJ Harvey & Tim Phillips gives me chills every time [1] (also the theme for Bad Sisters which is an amazing series). Also, pretty much every Canadian who was an adult in 2010 has an emotional connection to the k.d. lang performance of Hallelujah at the Vancouver olympics [2].
[0] https://youtu.be/PMSbICWbjBw
Concrete Blonde did a great cover of Everybody Knows — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Fb4K8pNmg
Johnette is a poet herself and a fantastic vocalist; she keeps the cynicism and the heartbreak. The cover has always _felt_ like a Cohen song to me.
My favourite cover of "Who By Fire" is by Susanne Wallumrød, featuring Giovanna Pessi on harp and Jane Achtman on viola da gamba [1].
The whole album — a mix of renaissance, baroque, and modern songs (such as The Plaint by Henry Purcell) performed on viola da gamba and harp — is superb.
I love it! Hardly the only Leonard Cohen song that I think would feel at home amongst renaissance and baroque songs.
one of my favorite LC covers, Chelsea Hotel, by one of my favorite artists, lead singer for the Belgian band Intergalactic Lovers:
https://youtu.be/BGKIA7QUEGY?si=d_uzxaJOmiNEAJAm
If you dig her, check out this Intergalactic Lovers concert, basically most of the songs from Little Heavy Burdens:
You may enjoy the _Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song_: https://youtu.be/tKNXude-qqc?feature=shared
For me Cohen is a double whammy, if you like to (or are able to?) "look at music" - his music is really fun to look at, I mean the composition etc, just how he lays it out is really really good. His lyrics are also sublime, he started as a poet, many think he's not much of a singer, his voice is.. you know, whatever, I think it took me some time to really..take the time... to look at his music properly, to see what all the fuss is about? It's pretty good, if you like looking at music he might, be the best... :) - 2:18 thru 4:05 in here is some "very cohen-ish" type stuff I particularly enjoy, it's a really fun walk. I find a lot of new stuff in this song each time I listen to it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux8s4wJXNnA
There's also "A Thousand Kisses Deep" and its rare cover by Jackson Browne https://youtu.be/w_mV4tdw2wY
And "Dance Me To The End of Love" which has also been beautifully covered.
I'm also very fond of Chelsea Hotel (more touching if you get the context) and Boogie Street.
Most of Cohen isn't very accessible to me as I miss many cultural markers, but they still very often feel appropriate (pop-up) in times of melancholy...
The entire album New Skin for the Old Ceremony is worth a listen. It contains many of his “hits” and is approachable for a modern audience.
It’s funny, I quite viscerally hate Cohen’s original Hallelujah, but I first encountered it as sung by Jeff Buckley, and that version I absolutely love.
Otherwise I like his first album (Songs of Leonard Cohen) when I’m in the mood for something depressing, but everything else of his I’ve heard just sounds to me like a drunk on a street corner with a Casio keyboard.
> on a street corner with a Casio keyboard
Muscling in on Wesley Willis' territory!
I wouldn’t discount exploring further if you disliked Hallelujah, as the song is a bit niche even against LC’s larger library. Find a best of album and give it a go. ‘Everybody Knows’ and many others that you may better regard will certainly be on it.
Whats the best start or way to go to discover Cohen for a newb?
His later tour stuff is great as another commented mentioned, but I'd say maybe give 'I'm Your Man' a whirl (it has Everybody Knows and Take This Waltz). If you don't like it then you probably won't like LC in general (although you maybe could still like Hallelujah as that one has sort of taken over the mainstream consciousness. Definitely a great song, and I'm in the minority probably being that I dislike most of the Hallelujah "covers", preferring the LC original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Your_Man_(Leonard_Cohen_...
Songs from a Room from 1990 is also pretty great, with one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, The Partisan.
His early stuff is a little different, mostly due to his voice being different tonally and being much younger (just his later stuff with the gruff voice comes off kind of different, but stylistically his music has stayed pretty consistent-- he has explored and incorporated world music throughout his career for instance), but you can't go wrong with his first album from 1967, with classics like Suzanne and So Long, Marianne.
Suzanne is quintessential young Cohen: written as poetry before he became a singer, put to simple but enjoyable music, personal but relatable in its theme and quite evocative of the 60s.
I think the best way to understand Cohen is that he is a legitimate poetry writer who realised early on that his voice and good look could earn him more money as a singer. He is in a lot of way a better Dylan except giving him the Nobel would have been less insulting to Roth.
I guess it is just a typo, but Songs from a Room is from 1969. For me his first three albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate made a kind of trilogy. I've always loved these ones, while his other albums more grown on me over time.
You know I thought it was a very early one, but I looked it up on Google and it said 1990 so I just blindly accepted it. Must have been a reference to a reissue perhaps..
I think I' have to share my favourite cover of "Take this waltz" then:
Live in London is a great album to atart with - he was in his seventies, doing a multi-year world tour, and still sounding absolutely at the top of his game.
I'm your Man, like some of his other 80s albums, can be a bit synth-heavy - which may be surprising if you've only heard Suzanne. I'd recommend it, although I dislike the final track (Jazz Police).
His final album, You Want it Darker is elegiac and sadly lovely. Probably not the place to start though.
I'm your Man has been rarely covered but someone did a good job of it https://youtu.be/qH06n-5-B70
I'd start with The Future (1992), I'm Your Man (1988), and Ten New Songs (2001). Those are, IMO, his most accessible and there's a very good chance you already know a few of those songs and haven't realized you know those songs. (e.g., "Everybody Knows" from I'm Your Man has been in a few movies, as have "The Future", and "Waiting for a Miracle" from The Future.)
Note that there's a really stark difference in his voice starting in the mid-80s. His early stuff doesn't sound quite right to me because I equate Leonard Cohen with his voice in the later albums.
Is it? I guess I have no idea what people perceive as his best-known work, generally. You may well be right - RYM has far more reviews of Songs of Leonard Cohen (and a higher average rating) than I'm Your Man or The Future. I still like those albums more, but I appear to be in the minority on that.
In my experience, the best way to discover Leonard Cohen's music is while driving back from a high school club convention in 1996, and the cool teacher starts playing New Skin for the Old Ceremony on cassette. And you're like: "this isn't Nirvana, what is it?!"
BUT, if you can't swing that, there's a great Best Of album that is 100% bangers. Slow, dark, introspective bangers.
Not the poster you asked but I'd say.. Start at or near the beginning. Later stuff has some gnarly sounding synths and arrangements that might not sound all that palatable to the modern ear (very 80s).
For me I first heard him via his album "Songs of Love and Hate". I found it in my dads record collection after a funeral of a close family member.
It's still my favourite.
> synths and arrangements that might not sound all that palatable to the modern ear
Are you referring to I'm Your Man? Because I'd say that it's his single most accessible collection of songs, and that his adoption of modern instrumentation was a genius move. The backing track for "First We Take Manhattan" sounds like New Order!
It's not modern instrumentation. It's a Technics arranger keyboard like the kind you might have heard in an airport smoking lounge. He started using them because they allowed him to build an arrangement without the help of other musicians. They've always sounded chintzy to me but they worked for him because of the cabaret nature of his songs.
Pretty sure I first found out about Cohen (and Pixies!) via Pump Up The Volume (1990). Fantastic movie. I thought the Concrete Blonde Everybody Knows cover was good, but then I dug and found the real thing and was blown away..
FWIW I think they're comparable, but just very different. Johnette Napolitano's voice is fantastic, and she really gets to stretch out on "Everybody Knows". As good as the recorded version is, hearing Concrete Blonde do it live was amazing. I saw them in 1993 in St. Louis and that show is still in my top 10 concerts, ever.
With respect to the many comments about LC's synth aestetic, Its a mistake to judge [art and media] against current standards. They should instead be evaluated through the lens and give insight as to what the target audience wanted then. - paraphrased from a statement by Quentin Tarantino about film
The Best Of Leonard Cohen a classic early collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Leonard_Cohen
But his albums, especially the early ones, are worth getting because of the extraordinary standard of both songwriting and production (by Bob Johnston).
Live in London is a great representation of how he sounded toward the end of his touring career, and I think it is a great place to start. IMO, there's not a bad track on the album.
I grew up with Leonard's music in the 90s, but it was only after his death that I learned about his non-musical poetry through another favorite of mine - the Swedish group "First Aid Kit". They did an absolutely breathtaking tribute show to honor their idol, where they arranged his music and poetry with a few of their friends: https://youtu.be/of_hZoVvqaM
The first thing I listened to from him was his very last album, "You Want it Darker", released less than a month before he passed. I don't know whether it's the best way to start, but I absolutely love the album, and it made a huge impact on me. It's one of the most emotional sets of music I've ever heard. You can hear his voice straining to its limits, he's putting everything he's got into it.
The posthumous Thanks for the Dance is a fantastic album as well. If anything, even more emotional than You Want It Darker.
I don't think it matters where you start, but start with the expectation that a lot of the music is really more spoken word poetry set to music, the emphasis is on the lyrics and their layered metaphor, and so the music strongly benefits from repeated listening.
There's stuff you won't unpack until you've listened to a song dozens of times.
Here's a Youtube video ("A Guide to Leonard Cohen") that came out right after he died and provides a brief bio and discusses some of his work: https://youtu.be/rLQD_kugBBM
I learned about Leonard Cohen by watching the movie McCabe and Mrs Miller. Recommended.
I learned about him by reading (but no audio...) and then watching Barney's version.
A great songwriter, a great book, a very nice movie.
I don't know about the best way to discover him, but nobody yet mentioned "Famous blue raincoat" nor "Dance me to the end of love" and I just couldn't let them go unnoticed. "Take this waltz" and "Hallelujah" are also great.
Maybe one of his later in life live performance albums (Live in Dublin or Live in London)would be a good place to start, if you don’t mind spending an hour of audio listening. He’s personable, performs his greatest hits, and feels like a man demonstrating his life’s work.
I think either this, or his last two albums.
The Hills[1] is just sublime.
Who By Fire
The little-known story of Leonard Cohen’s concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War
My favourite cover of "Hallelujah" is the yiddish one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504