FEATURE:
The Last Dance
IN THIS PHOTO: Leonard Cohen at home in Los Angeles in September 2016/PHOTO CREDIT: Graeme Mitchell for The New Yorker
Will We Ever See Another Lyricist Like Leonard Cohen?
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WE have plenty of great songwriters…
in the world right now, but I wonder whether we will see anybody like Leonard Cohen. The Canadian songwriter died in 2016 and is viewed by many as one of the greatest songwriters ever. What amazes me most is the poetry of his work. I think there is a generational shift when it comes to writing and tone. Maybe the most poetic and profound songwriters now are those working in Rap and Hip-Hop - rather than the Folk and Pop artists of old. I have always had huge respect for the best of the genres who could not only write in a very real and urgent way, but the language used transcends ordinary songwriting. Today, we have songwriters like Kate Tempest who is more a poet than a songwriter; someone who can weave together incredible lines and thoughts that are so much more stirring and arresting than what most of her peers are putting down. It is sad that we do not really have songwriters like Leonard Cohen anymore. Whilst he may not have been the most cheerful or energised artist, his lyrics and language always provoked reaction and deep admiration. His final album, You Want It Darker, was released just before his death and showed that the old master was in supreme form and had lost none of his genius. With his voice older and more withered, there was an extra degree of poignancy hearing him sing such emotive and stunning songs. Maybe the 1960s and 1970s bred a sort of songwriter that we do not really see now.
The likes of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen took lyrics to new heights and created these incredible stories. I am not suggesting modern music places less emphasis on lyrics, but we do not really have anyone who reaches the same heights as the older guard. Maybe Kate Tempest and Laura Marling come close, but there is something about Leonard Cohen’s songs that reaches deeper into the soul. Maybe it is the gravity of his voice or the simplicity of the compositions; one listens to a Cohen classic and you are taken somewhere else; you are moved and stunned by his wordplay and poetic brilliance. Each of us has a different opinion as to what his greatest lyrics and songs are. I am a particular fan of Hallelujah from 1984’s Various Positions and how evocative the words are. My favourite lyrics from the song are: “Your faith was strong but you needed proof/You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya”. There is something about the imagery and how Cohen delivers the words that makes the spine tingle. Although the song was covered to perfection by Jeff Buckley in 1994, the power and majesty of the words clearly spoke to Buckley; something about the song captivated him. Leonard Cohen’s work can switch between the personal and harrowing to the romantic and tender. The way Cohen crafts lines, I think, will never be bettered.
Consider “So let me judge your love affair/In this room where I have sentenced mine to death” from Take This Longing or “Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river/You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever/And you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there” from Suzanne. He can startle you with a single line or seduce the senses with such intimate and wonderful descriptions. I have admiration for a lot of songwriters today, but there are very few who can pen a lyrics as awe-inspiring and emotive as “You say you've gone away from me/But I can feel you when you breathe” (from Avalanche). When it comes to love and desire, Cohen spun together nature, tenderness and the explicit; he was never limited to one palette and had this incredibly varied songbook. Whether he was referring to mortality and ageing (“Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey/I ache in the places where I used to play” from 1988’s Tower of Song) or pure sensuality and love (“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin/Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in” from Dance Me to the End of Love), Cohen’s choice of words is sublime. Cohen lived with depression through most of his adult life, and many of his lyrics stepped into quite dark territory.
There are few songwriters who could write about love so eloquently and awe-struck and write lines like “Now if you can manage to get/Your trembling fingers to behave/Why don't you try unwrapping/A stainless steel razor blade?”. Those words were taken from Dress Rehearsal Rag; a song whose entire narrative is more like a film or play rather than a normal song. I love what Cohen recorded for You Want It Darker. His pen was still as sharp on his final album as it was earlier in his career. In fact, many people did not expect to hear any more Cohen material after 2016. Adam Cohen (Cohen’s song), together with some notable collaborators, helped put together Thanks for the Dance. Listen to the opening song, Happens to the Heart, and the weight in Cohen’s voice. His lyrics are, as you expect, exceptional. I love the imagery he projects and the potency of the words. My favourite verse is this: “There's a mist of summer kisses/Where I tried to double-park/The rivalry was vicious/The women were in charge/It was nothing, it was business/But it left an ugly mark/I've come here to revisit/What happens to the heart”. Although some critics wrote off Thanks for the Dance as incomplete and scrappy, I think some of Cohen’s best songs appear on the album. In this review, The Guardian point to the strengths of Thanks for the Dance:
“Opener Happens to the Heart reflects on his career with trademark humility: “I was always working steady, I never called it art. I got my shit together, meeting Christ and reading Marx.” Other songs consider human flaws, some of which were exposed in the recent documentary Marianne and Leonard. He considers his restlessness in relationships – “We played a stunning couple but I never liked the part” – and rues “what I’ve left undone”.
Puppets powerfully contends with the world he is leaving, comparing fascism (“German puppets burned the Jews”) and recent foreign policy (“Puppet presidents command puppet troops to burn the land”). Like those of Marvin Gaye and Prince, Cohen’s oeuvre sought to reconcile the spiritual and the sensual, which both feature heavily again. Any initial chuckles at the fading octogenarian deadpanning about nipples that “rose like bread” disappear as it becomes apparent that he is reliving a distant encounter with startling, undimmed passion: “I’ve forgotten half my life. I still remember this.”
As the pace slows to a transcendent crawl and backing vocals form a heavenly choir, The Hills mocks his ageing body (“The system is shot / I’m living on pills”) and the stunning The Goal finds him “almost alive” and “settling accounts of the soul”. The last poem he recorded, Listen to the Hummingbird, implores us to find beauty in God and butterflies: “Don’t listen to me.” And, finally, there is a vast, empty silence, and he is gone”.
From his 1967 debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen, to the posthumous Thanks for the Dance, few songwriters who have ever lived have written words as strong and beautiful as Cohen. We do have some modern poets, but I don’t think they reach the same league as Cohen when it comes to depth and timelessness. Even though he has left us, we have his amazing work in the world – that will never go away. I have included an essential Leonard Cohen playlist at the bottom of the feature that highlights and exposes the lyrical genius of…
IN THIS PHOTO: Leonard Cohen in 1976
ONE of music’s all-time greats.