Poet, singer, songwriter, and novelist Leonard Norman Cohen was born on this day in 1934.
Cohen’s work, compounding upon the literary advancements made in popular music by contemporaries like Bob Dylan, advanced the function of lyrics in mainstream works to incorporate themes of isolation, loss, and existentialism.
His songwriting was informed by his background as a poet and novelist throughout the 1950s, stemming from his time at McGill University where he studied until 1955, graduating with his Bachelor’s degree.
Upon graduation, Cohen would have a book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, published before returning to his studies, first at McGill Faculty of Law, then Columbia University School of General Studies.
Cohen would soon publish the subsequent books of poetry, The Spice-Box of Earth and Flowers for Hitler, followed by two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers.
In 1967, Cohen departed his native Canada to pursue a career in the U.S. as a songwriter.
Success came gradually, but came nonetheless. Initially finding success through others’ renditions of his songs, Cohen would eventually eventually develop a following with his own music.
Known for his disengaged delivery and flamenco influenced guitar playing, Cohen conjured complex worlds in his lyrics, painting scenes of broken characters in an unpredictable world – a characteristic of his musical craft perhaps best epitomized by his third album, Songs of Love and Hate.
Cohen’s music initially employed a relatively stark approach to arrangement and production, with the artist preferring the voice, acoustic guitar, and of course the lyrics, to remain the focal points of a given performance.
Throughout his musical career – which spanned just shy of 50 years – however, he would incorporate a number of production and arrangement techniques in his work to varying degrees of success.
Some of the more dated elements of 1980s production which plague the discographies of a great many of the most consequential artists of our time crop up in much of Cohen’s work from the latter half of the decade.
Still, much of the core sound remained unflinchingly prevalent, seemingly alienating the more garish elements of the modern variables, thus conjuring a sort of sonic warfare as the musical backdrop for already apocalyptic-leaning tunes like “Everybody Knows” and “First We Take Manhattan.”
The mid-80s saw the release of Cohen’s seventh album, Various Positions, which included what would become his most enduring song, “Hallelujah.”
Interest in the tune steadily increased throughout the course of Cohen’s life and beyond, and the song has since been recorded hundreds of times in a number of languages and by various artists.
Cohen wrote consistently until his death on November 7th, 2016, at the age of 82. At the time of his passing he had just completed work on his fourteenth studio album, You Want It Darker, which saw release on October 21, 2016, just 17 days prior to his death.
The album itself, a hyper-aware meditation on God, the trappings of mortality and the inevitability of death, earned the singer a posthumous Best Rock Performance award for the title track at the 2018 Grammy Awards.
As an artist, Leonard Cohen was and remains an iconic figure representative of the traversal of the path untraveled; a stalwart of artistic integrity and unwillingness to conform to arbitrary standards imposed by those with precious little grasp on that which constitutes genuine consequence.
Cohen’s unwavering and forthright commitment to the exploration of existence on his own terms, right up until his departure from this world, has endowed his artistry and body of work with an enduring significance which stands to affect both writers and musicians for generations to come.
Here’s wishing a Happy Birthday to “Last Year’s Man” himself, the late, great Leonard Cohen.
