This surprised me:
...the rock era unfolded as ... a series of begats (Elvis begat the Beatles, the Beatles begat Jann Wenner, etc.) involving identity-famished teenagers and their heroes ... Cohen is absent from this narrative for one simple reason: He was the same age as Elvis.
Yep, the album Various Positions on which Hallelujah appeared was not even released in the US by Columbia, they released it in Europe instead.
I think it was only after Bob Dylan covered Hallelujah ~1988 at one of his live concerts, he was the first to cover it (John Cale did it in 1991), that the song and the album exploded in popularity.
>involving identity-famished teenagers
Transposed to HN it would be:
The era of software unfolded as a series of frameworks, involving identity-famished nerds and their languages...
This seems to overlook the more obvious reason he is absent from that narrative: he was never all that popular. His only top 100 hit, for "Hallelujah", came in 2016, after his death.[0]
[0]: https://www.billboard.com/artist/leonard-cohen/; compare to Elvis https://www.billboard.com/artist/elvis-presley/, Beatles https://www.billboard.com/artist/the-beatles/