There Is A War

“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war/ And the ones who say that there isn’t” This is the most acerbic that Leonard Cohen has ever gotten. Whatever he was going through in 1974, his songs from the time show …

That Don’t Make it Junk

“I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk” For a poet, Leonard Cohen liked to be very literal-minded with his album titles. Ten New Songs was exactly as advertised, just as Songs of Leonard Cohen had been. Just some songs by …

Thanks for the Dance

Any artist who has the temerity to die before the public is done with them, will inevitably have every scrap of unreleased material posthumously disinterred. This can be undignified or downright ghoulish, especially if the person’s death was untimely. Leonard Cohen’s passing was anything but …

Teachers

The teacher you were looking for was inside of you all along, and all you ever had to do was click the heels of your ruby slippers. That is my most positive-minded take, and it’s as good as any, because Leonard Cohen defies interpretation, as …

Take This Waltz

For the most part, Leonard Cohen understandably refrained from covers of other people’s songs. Why would he cover someone else’s material? He was not a singer; he was a poet who had to learn to sing in order to make people hear his words. However, …

Take This Longing

My in-depth literary analysis: this is the most elegantly worded song ever written about begging for a pity-fuck from someone who doesn’t like you. Which goes to show, that if you’re a poet – a real Poet, not the guy who brings an acoustic guitar …

Suzanne

Suzanne takes you down, and well, you know the rest. She takes you on a journey of profound mystical intimacy… with Jesus. Leonard Cohen, then an unknown struggling poet, really shot right out of the gate to stake his territory with the first song he …

A Street

Leonard Cohen was born old. In his thirties he wrote from a vantage point which felt like that of a man twice his age. As he grew older, he got downright apocalyptic. The future, as he so famously wrote, is murder, and the past, well, …

The Stranger Song

Watch Leonard Cohen’s very first television appearance. Note the absence of shrieking teenage fans. Cohen’s droning vocal style and dense lyrics precluded him from being invited to a lot TOTP-type TV programmes, even when he had become well-known. Not that he was clamoring for that …

The Story of Isaac

As I’ve increasingly noted, Leonard Cohen’s writing is filled with religious references, some very vague and some common. However, Cohen is not given to interpreting ideas literal-mindedly, and a nearly-conventional narrative song like this one is an anomaly in his work. Anyone who has a …