Leonard Norman Cohen CC GOQ was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist who died on November 7, 2016. Religion, politics, loneliness, sadness, sexuality, loss, death, and personal relationships were all themes in his work.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor. In 2011, he was awarded one of the Prince of Asturias Literature Awards and the eighth Glenn Gould Prize.
Cohen worked as a poet and novelist in the 1950s and early 1960s before embarking on a music career in 1967. Three more folk albums followed the songs of Leonard Cohen (1967): Songs from a Room (1969), Songs of Love and Hate (1971), and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1973). (1974). Death of a Ladies’ Man, co-written and produced by Phil Spector, marked a departure from Cohen’s prior austere sound.
Cohen returned in 1979 with the more traditional Recent Songs, incorporating jazz, East Asian, and Mediterranean influences into his acoustic approach. “Hallelujah,” Cohen’s most renowned song was released on his seventh album, Various Positions (1984). Cohen’s transition to synthesized productions began with 1988’s I’m Your Man. Cohen followed up with The Future in 1992, which had grim lyrics and references to political and social turmoil.
Cohen returned to music in 2001 with the publication of Ten New Songs, a great success in Canada and Europe. Dear Heather, his tenth album, was released in 2004. Cohen returned to touring to recoup his losses after discovering that his manager had taken the majority of his money and sold his publication rights in 2005.
Following a succession of successful tours from 2008 to 2013, he published three albums in his final years: Old Ideas (2012), Popular Problems (2014), and You Want It Darker (2016), the last of which was released three weeks before his death. Thanks to the Dance, his posthumous fifteenth and last studio album, was released in November 2019.
In 2023, Rolling Stone placed him 103rd among the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Did Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan ever meet?
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen met in Paris in 1983 to talk about music. Both went on to sell millions of albums. Their exchange wonderfully illustrates two ends of a spectrum: the spectrum of how artists create work.
