Leonard Cohen

The Poet Who Sang: Leonard Cohen's Life in Art

Leonard Cohen was a poet before he ever picked up a guitar in earnest, and he remained a poet long after the world decided to call him a singer-songwriter. Born on September 21, 1934, in Montreal, Quebec, into a middle-class Jewish family, Cohen lost his father at age nine, an early encounter with grief that would shadow and shape his work for decades.^[1] He studied at McGill University under poets like Irving Layton and Louis Dudek, and by his early twenties had already published his first poetry collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956).^[2] Two novels, several more volumes of verse, and a years-long sojourn on the Greek island of Hydra followed before Cohen, nearing his mid-thirties and frustrated by the economics of literary life, turned to music.^[1]

That transition was not a reinvention so much as an expansion. The same preoccupations that filled his poetry (desire, faith, failure, the tangle of sacred and profane) simply found a new vehicle. His literary influences, W.B. Yeats, Federico Garcia Lorca, Walt Whitman, remained audible in every lyric he wrote. Cohen never stopped thinking of himself as a writer who happened to sing.

The bridge from literature to music was built in part by Judy Collins, who recognized the songwriting potential in Cohen's poetry before Cohen himself fully embraced it. Collins recorded his compositions "Suzanne" and "Dress Rehearsal Rag" for her 1966 album In My Life, introducing his work to a folk audience and paving the way for his own recording deal with Columbia Records.^[9] "Suzanne" itself was inspired by Cohen's platonic friendship with the dancer Suzanne Verdal in Montreal. She lived near the St. Lawrence River and served him Constant Comment tea; Cohen later described the song as "pure journalism," a simple report of what happened between them, though the finished composition transcended reportage entirely.^[10] In a painful irony, Cohen signed away the publishing rights to "Suzanne" in a contract he did not fully understand, never profiting directly from his most famous early composition.^[11]

The Folk Years (1967-1974)

Cohen's debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), arrived spare and hypnotic. Built on fingerpicked acoustic guitar and his low, plainspoken baritone, it contained "Suzanne," "Sisters of Mercy," and "So Long, Marianne," songs that established his voice as something wholly distinct from the Dylan-influenced folk revival happening around him.^[1] Where others shouted, Cohen murmured. Where others protested, Cohen seduced and confessed.

Songs from a Room (1969) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971) deepened the approach. "Bird on the Wire" became an unlikely anthem of flawed devotion, and "Famous Blue Raincoat" offered one of the most quietly devastating letter-songs ever recorded. New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974) brought more varied arrangements and "Chelsea Hotel #2," a frank, tender elegy for a brief affair. Throughout this period, Cohen's music was minimal by design. The words carried everything, and the melodies existed to serve the words.^[2]

Wilderness and "Hallelujah" (1977-1984)

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a difficult stretch. Death of a Ladies' Man (1977), produced by Phil Spector in famously chaotic sessions, buried Cohen's voice under a wall of sound that satisfied almost no one. Recent Songs (1979) restored some equilibrium, weaving in Middle Eastern textures and jazz inflections, but commercial traction eluded him.^[1]

His long relationship with Suzanne Elrod, the mother of his children Adam and Lorca, ended in 1979, adding personal upheaval to professional uncertainty.^[12] By the early 1980s he was involved with French photographer Dominique Issermann, who directed several of his music videos, including those for "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "First We Take Manhattan."^[12]

Then came Various Positions (1984), the album Columbia Records declined to release in the United States, reportedly telling Cohen, "We know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good."^[3] The record contained "Dance Me to the End of Love" and a song called "Hallelujah" that would, over the following two decades, become one of the most covered compositions in popular music history. Cohen wrote roughly 80 draft verses before settling on the final lyric, a meditation on broken love that braids King David, Samson, and bedroom intimacy into a single prayer.^[3] It took years, and interpreters like Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright, for the world to catch up.^[3] In the same year, Cohen also published Book of Mercy, a collection of fifty prose-poems shaped by Hebrew scripture and Zen contemplation, which won the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Poetry.^[13]

Reinvention: The Synthesizer Era (1988-1992)

I'm Your Man (1988) marked one of the most striking reinventions in popular music. Cohen traded acoustic guitar for synthesizers and drum machines, pitched his voice even lower, and adopted a sardonic, worldly tone that suited the material perfectly. "First We Take Manhattan," "Everybody Knows," and "Tower of Song" were the work of a man who had shed any remaining preciousness about his image. The album introduced Cohen to a younger generation and is widely regarded as one of his finest.^[1]

The Future (1992) built on that momentum with politically charged songwriting that responded to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Los Angeles riots, and a general sense of civilizational unease. The title track was apocalyptic and darkly funny. "Democracy" was patient and prophetic. And "Anthem" offered the line that may stand as Cohen's most enduring contribution to the language: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."^[2]

Silence and the Mountain (1994-2004)

In 1994, Cohen withdrew from public life to study at the Mount Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles under Zen master Joshu Sasaki Roshi.^[6] He was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk in 1996, receiving the dharma name Jikan, meaning "the silent one."^[6] He spent five years in rigorous monastic discipline: early rising, manual labor, long meditation in the cold mountain air. He never renounced his Judaism, noting simply that he was not looking for a new religion but deepening a conversation that had always been underway.^[1]

He returned to recording with Ten New Songs (2001), a spare, meditative collaboration with Sharon Robinson, and Dear Heather (2004), a quieter, more experimental album that mixed spoken word with song. Neither record made headlines, but both reflected a man who had genuinely been changed by contemplative practice.^[2]

The Final Ascent (2008-2016)

Cohen's return to touring in 2008, prompted in part by the discovery that a former manager had embezzled most of his retirement savings, became one of the great late-career stories in music.^[4] His three-hour concerts were revelatory: generous, funny, deeply moving, performed with a crack band and a graciousness that stunned audiences worldwide. Rolling Stone named it the best tour of the decade.^[4] He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the same year^[5] and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.^[1]

The final studio albums were remarkable. Old Ideas (2012) reached number three on the Billboard 200, his highest-ever U.S. chart position, with a bluesy warmth that felt like a homecoming.^[8] Popular Problems (2014), released on his 80th birthday, was sharp and assured. And You Want It Darker (2016), released just 19 days before his death, was a masterpiece of farewell.^[7] The title track, featuring the choir of his childhood synagogue in Montreal, opened with the Hebrew word "Hineni" ("Here I am"), the response Abraham gives to God.^[7] Cohen was staring directly at the end, and he did not flinch.

Leonard Cohen died on November 7, 2016, in Los Angeles, at the age of 82.^[1] A posthumous album, Thanks for the Dance (2019), was completed by his son Adam from vocal recordings Leonard had left behind.^[1]

Themes and Legacy

Across five decades of work, Cohen returned again and again to a handful of subjects: erotic and spiritual love (often treated as the same thing), the dignity of failure, the interplay of darkness and light, mortality, and the stubborn persistence of faith in a broken world. He was not a cheerful writer, but he was never nihilistic. His fundamental posture was one of surrender, not defeat. Brokenness, in Cohen's vision, was not something to fix but something to honor as the condition through which grace enters.

His influence stretches across generations, from Nick Cave and Jeff Buckley to Lana Del Rey and Father John Misty. More than 300 artists have recorded versions of "Hallelujah" alone.^[3] He bridged literature and popular music more completely than perhaps any other artist of his era, and his late-career work proved that artistic relevance is not the exclusive property of youth.

Discography

Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Songs from a Room (1969)

Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974)

Death of a Ladies' Man (1977)

Recent Songs (1979)

Various Positions (1984)

I'm Your Man (1988)

The Future (1992)

Ten New Songs (2001)

Dear Heather (2004)

Old Ideas (2012)

Popular Problems (2014)

You Want It Darker (2016)

Thanks for the Dance (2019, posthumous)