Whats the best start or way to go to discover Cohen for a newb?
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His later tour stuff is great as another commented mentioned, but I'd say maybe give 'I'm Your Man' a whirl (it has Everybody Knows and Take This Waltz). If you don't like it then you probably won't like LC in general (although you maybe could still like Hallelujah as that one has sort of taken over the mainstream consciousness. Definitely a great song, and I'm in the minority probably being that I dislike most of the Hallelujah "covers", preferring the LC original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Your_Man_(Leonard_Cohen_...
Songs from a Room from 1990 is also pretty great, with one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, The Partisan.
His early stuff is a little different, mostly due to his voice being different tonally and being much younger (just his later stuff with the gruff voice comes off kind of different, but stylistically his music has stayed pretty consistent-- he has explored and incorporated world music throughout his career for instance), but you can't go wrong with his first album from 1967, with classics like Suzanne and So Long, Marianne.
Suzanne is quintessential young Cohen: written as poetry before he became a singer, put to simple but enjoyable music, personal but relatable in its theme and quite evocative of the 60s.
I think the best way to understand Cohen is that he is a legitimate poetry writer who realised early on that his voice and good look could earn him more money as a singer. He is in a lot of way a better Dylan except giving him the Nobel would have been less insulting to Roth.
I guess it is just a typo, but Songs from a Room is from 1969. For me his first three albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate made a kind of trilogy. I've always loved these ones, while his other albums more grown on me over time.
You know I thought it was a very early one, but I looked it up on Google and it said 1990 so I just blindly accepted it. Must have been a reference to a reissue perhaps..
I think I' have to share my favourite cover of "Take this waltz" then:
Wow! What a talented young man, and incredible rendition. And the piano improvisation toward the end was excellent and unexpected. This made my day, thank you.
Awesome hidden YouTube gem indeed! Thank you!
Live in London is a great album to atart with - he was in his seventies, doing a multi-year world tour, and still sounding absolutely at the top of his game.
I'm your Man, like some of his other 80s albums, can be a bit synth-heavy - which may be surprising if you've only heard Suzanne. I'd recommend it, although I dislike the final track (Jazz Police).
His final album, You Want it Darker is elegiac and sadly lovely. Probably not the place to start though.
I'm your Man has been rarely covered but someone did a good job of it https://youtu.be/qH06n-5-B70
I'd start with The Future (1992), I'm Your Man (1988), and Ten New Songs (2001). Those are, IMO, his most accessible and there's a very good chance you already know a few of those songs and haven't realized you know those songs. (e.g., "Everybody Knows" from I'm Your Man has been in a few movies, as have "The Future", and "Waiting for a Miracle" from The Future.)
Note that there's a really stark difference in his voice starting in the mid-80s. His early stuff doesn't sound quite right to me because I equate Leonard Cohen with his voice in the later albums.
I started with I'm Your Man and it's probably still my favorite but there are good reasons why his best known work is on the first few albums.
Is it? I guess I have no idea what people perceive as his best-known work, generally. You may well be right - RYM has far more reviews of Songs of Leonard Cohen (and a higher average rating) than I'm Your Man or The Future. I still like those albums more, but I appear to be in the minority on that.
In my experience, the best way to discover Leonard Cohen's music is while driving back from a high school club convention in 1996, and the cool teacher starts playing New Skin for the Old Ceremony on cassette. And you're like: "this isn't Nirvana, what is it?!"
BUT, if you can't swing that, there's a great Best Of album that is 100% bangers. Slow, dark, introspective bangers.
Hah, love it.
Not the poster you asked but I'd say.. Start at or near the beginning. Later stuff has some gnarly sounding synths and arrangements that might not sound all that palatable to the modern ear (very 80s).
For me I first heard him via his album "Songs of Love and Hate". I found it in my dads record collection after a funeral of a close family member.
It's still my favourite.
> synths and arrangements that might not sound all that palatable to the modern ear
Are you referring to I'm Your Man? Because I'd say that it's his single most accessible collection of songs, and that his adoption of modern instrumentation was a genius move. The backing track for "First We Take Manhattan" sounds like New Order!
It's not modern instrumentation. It's a Technics arranger keyboard like the kind you might have heard in an airport smoking lounge. He started using them because they allowed him to build an arrangement without the help of other musicians. They've always sounded chintzy to me but they worked for him because of the cabaret nature of his songs.
His Technics is used in places, such as "Tower of Song". But "First We Take Manhattan" was recorded using a Synclavier, which at the time was as cutting-edge as you could get.
Interesting. I didn't know that about the Synclavier. I still think the production in his later stuff will sound very quaint to anyone encountering it for the first time.
He was a really dedicated user of those Technics machines. He and Wesley Willis, lol.
Pretty sure I first found out about Cohen (and Pixies!) via Pump Up The Volume (1990). Fantastic movie. I thought the Concrete Blonde Everybody Knows cover was good, but then I dug and found the real thing and was blown away..
FWIW I think they're comparable, but just very different. Johnette Napolitano's voice is fantastic, and she really gets to stretch out on "Everybody Knows". As good as the recorded version is, hearing Concrete Blonde do it live was amazing. I saw them in 1993 in St. Louis and that show is still in my top 10 concerts, ever.
With respect to the many comments about LC's synth aestetic, Its a mistake to judge [art and media] against current standards. They should instead be evaluated through the lens and give insight as to what the target audience wanted then. - paraphrased from a statement by Quentin Tarantino about film
The Best Of Leonard Cohen a classic early collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Leonard_Cohen
But his albums, especially the early ones, are worth getting because of the extraordinary standard of both songwriting and production (by Bob Johnston).
Live in London is a great representation of how he sounded toward the end of his touring career, and I think it is a great place to start. IMO, there's not a bad track on the album.
I grew up with Leonard's music in the 90s, but it was only after his death that I learned about his non-musical poetry through another favorite of mine - the Swedish group "First Aid Kit". They did an absolutely breathtaking tribute show to honor their idol, where they arranged his music and poetry with a few of their friends:
https://youtu.be/of_hZoVvqaM
The first thing I listened to from him was his very last album, "You Want it Darker", released less than a month before he passed. I don't know whether it's the best way to start, but I absolutely love the album, and it made a huge impact on me. It's one of the most emotional sets of music I've ever heard. You can hear his voice straining to its limits, he's putting everything he's got into it.
The posthumous Thanks for the Dance is a fantastic album as well. If anything, even more emotional than You Want It Darker.
I don't think it matters where you start, but start with the expectation that a lot of the music is really more spoken word poetry set to music, the emphasis is on the lyrics and their layered metaphor, and so the music strongly benefits from repeated listening.
There's stuff you won't unpack until you've listened to a song dozens of times.
Here's a Youtube video ("A Guide to Leonard Cohen") that came out right after he died and provides a brief bio and discusses some of his work: https://youtu.be/rLQD_kugBBM
I learned about Leonard Cohen by watching the movie McCabe and Mrs Miller. Recommended.
I learned about him by reading (but no audio...) and then watching Barney's version.
A great songwriter, a great book, a very nice movie.
On my watchlist!
First you take Manhattan. Then you take Berlin. You want it darker?
I'm fond of the R.E.M. cover of First We Take Manhattan (which also was my introduction to Cohen).
That's a terrific track. Awesome intro riff, too.
"The Best of Leonard Cohen" isn't a bad place. It's from mid-career, so not exhaustive, but most of the songs on it are gems.
I don't know about the best way to discover him, but nobody yet mentioned "Famous blue raincoat" nor "Dance me to the end of love" and I just couldn't let them go unnoticed. "Take this waltz" and "Hallelujah" are also great.
Those are all wonderful songs and included in the 2002 compilation 'The Essential Leonard Cohen', which incidentally is how I discovered his music.
Maybe one of his later in life live performance albums (Live in Dublin or Live in London)would be a good place to start, if you don’t mind spending an hour of audio listening. He’s personable, performs his greatest hits, and feels like a man demonstrating his life’s work.
His first two albums are a revelation
If you can cope with "man and guitar", nothing else
It is the songs. Just the songs
I think either this, or his last two albums.
The Hills[1] is just sublime.
Who By Fire
The little-known story of Leonard Cohen’s concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War
just do the greatest hits, and maybe songs of love and hate.
Suzanne