10 songs to make you fall in love with Leonard Cohen

‘Is This What You Wanted’

A song boosted by an incredible modern cover is ‘Is This What You Wanted’. While Cohen’s own discography has more than enough greatness to make anyone fall in love, his legacy and influence on other acts is just as impressive as countless artists have paid homage to him. The Last Shadow Puppets’ cover of ‘Is This What You Wanted’ definitely does that, as Alex Turner’s crooning voice levels up the track’s snarky yet seductive build.

As a perfect display of Cohen’s ability to imbue lyrics with sex appeal, literary power, wit, and a cutting edge all at once, this biting take on disappointment, a failing relationship, and a potential affair isn’t a simple story but one rich with amazing one-liners.

‘One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong’

Priests, candle magic, spiritual teachers, libraries and all kinds of various images all used to tell a tale of longing? Yeah, sounds like a Cohen song.

Sitting on his debut album, ‘One of Us Cannot Be Wrong’ should have acted as an early insight into the kind of lyrically adventurous tracks he would continue to put out. Moving through different scenes and images, bringing in a cast of characters all while keeping the story and feeling of the song clear as his unleashes this opus on desire and yearning, it’s the kind of track that captures the artist at his very best. Paired with a simple instrumental, it also captures a period of time when Cohen needed little more than an acoustic guitar and a notepad to create something incredible.

However, Father John Misty’s cover of the song is a great way into Cohen through a side route. Levelled up into a bigger, bolder production, it’s as if he takes the lyrical build of this early track and merges it with Cohen’s later, more maximalist period, adding a big dose of drama and theatre.

‘Field Commander Cohen’

Sitting on his 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony, ‘Field Commander Cohen’ is a painfully underappreciated track. By the time of its release, Cohen had made his name, and it was heard the world round. Playing at festivals, heading out on tours and being counted amongst the folk elite, he’d achieved fame and notoriety, but on this track, he reveals that he always felt a little weird about it.

“Field Commander Cohen, he was our most important spy,” he sings, imagining himself parachuting into the industry like an outsider gathering intel. Full of his classic wit and humour, along with the storytelling skills his work as a novelist honed, this is the sort of song that only Cohen could or would craft, handling social commentary and observation with an unrivalled ease.

‘Suzanne’

Cohen’s first-ever song is worthy of a slot. While ‘Suzanne’ opened up his debut album in 1967, the song was already known and beloved by then. Written first as a poem and then shyly performed as a song before he ever dared to consider himself a musician, singer Judy Collins heard the track and fell in love. Before Cohen had even recorded his own, she released her version of the track in 1966, introducing him to the world as a songwriter to note.

In 1967, again before Cohen released his own version, Collins also sang his song ‘Sisters Of Mercy’. As a fan of his work, she was not only determined to get his music out there, but she played a major role in coaxing Cohen out of his shell, onto the stage and into the studio before he finally released his own take on this opening track, launching his music career with a gorgeously luxurious love song.

‘Listen to the Hummingbird’

In his final years, Cohen was still working. “If it is your destiny to be this labourer called a writer, you know that you’ve got to go to work every day,” he once said of his process, seeing his talent as a job that he honed day after day, even well into his old gap. It gave him purpose, so even though he knew he likely wouldn’t get to finish his final album, he worked on it all the same.

“[We had] conversations about what instrumentation and what feelings he wanted the completed work to evoke,” Cohen’s song Adam said of this final project, adding, “Sadly, the fact that I would be completing them without him was given.” So after his father passed in 2016, he got to work finishing these pieces off, releasing Thanks For The Dance, Cohen’s last offering, in 2019. ‘Listen To The Hummingbird’ is the most beautiful track and the final words uttered in the musician and writer’s career. Closing with a poem set to an instrumentation composed by his son, it’s an incredibly moving goodbye.

‘I’m Your Man’

At some point, Cohen’s voice completely and totally changed. His folk sound was fully replaced by a gruff and gritty drawl that was deep and dark. To some, it lost its magic. To others, it was gorgeous all the same.

But on ‘I’m Your Man’, he put his new timbre to excellent use. Sleazy and seductive, the sexiness of the song is so over the top in a way that perfectly matched with his now sultry vocals. Matched with a good dose of humour in the lyrics, there’s a level of silliness here that only Cohen could pull off as his words maintained their signature wit and charm, even as his sound continued to evolve and shift. Perfectly placed in the movie Secretary, that scene alone could make a person fall in love with late-stage Cohen.

‘Memories’

To some, Cohen’s Death Of A Ladies’ Man era was a bad one. Departing from his earlier folk sound, he had the classic experience of working with Ronnie Spector and then being absolutely smothered under his wall of sound approach. It’s true that the album doesn’t do much justice to his musical or songwriting talent amidst the busy and often overblown build, but who can deny the charm of ‘Memories’?

Big, boisterous, somewhat cheesy but endlessly fun, this maximalist track goes all in on Cohen’s reputation as a serial flirt as the song builds and builds to the booming central lyric, “Won’t you let me see…” – pause for suspense – “your naked body!”

‘Famous Blue Raincoat’

If there could only be one song chosen to represent Cohen’s literary streak and the way his writing intersected with his music, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ could be it. Set out like a letter, the singer addresses an unknown someone, picking through the carcass of a love affair and messy split. Or that’s how it seems.

The song was a mystery to even Cohen himself. Even as the writer, he never seemed to decide exactly what inspired it or what the story he was telling was. But all the same, the track manages to be deeply poignant and moving, dropping listeners deeply and directly into an atmosphere they’ll feel, even if it’s not an easy narrative to understand.

‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’

Beyond being a beautiful song, ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ feels like a historical document, too. “I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel,” he sings, setting the track in the infamous New York hotel that housed his generation’s best talent. Capturing a moment in time when people like Bob Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, Patti Smith and countless others all lived and worked under the same roof, his recollecting track has become an anthem for that time and the “fallen robins” that were lost to it.

But it’s also an anthem for Janis Joplin. Written about a brief love affair they shared, Cohen later came to regret being so open about his inspiration. But given how heart-achingly beautiful the song is, surely Joplin wouldn’t have managed.

‘Take This Longing’

Leonard Cohen should be crowned the king of yearning. Starting out as a writer and poet, it’s no surprise that he proved a true talent at writing rich, luxurious songs of love and longing like this one, ‘Take This Longing’. Penned for German singer Nico during a period of Cohen’s unrequited infatuation for her, each and every line drips with desire to simply be as close to her as she would allow.

“Everything depends upon how near you sleep to me,” he sings in what could be argued to be one of the most romantic lines he ever wrote in his long history of love songs and poems. Perfectly capturing the experience of wanting someone so bad, in any way they allow, Cohen offers up his longing even if it isn’t reciprocated.