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The 1984 song that Bob Dylan hailed as showcasing Leonard Cohen’s “greatest genius”

Wed 22 July 2026 17:16, UK

Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan sit side by side on the Mount Rushmore of great North American songwriters.

Their poetry and poise have had a transformative effect on music, making crumby couplets about holding hands seem like child’s play, as they whisked a revolution of depth and sincerity into the great mixing bowl of the humble pop song. Their admiration for each other in this endeavour was profound and mutual.

“Dylan says to me, ‘As far as I’m concerned, Leonard, you’re number one. I’m number zero.’ Meaning, as I understood it at the time – and I was not ready to dispute it – that his work was beyond measure and my work was pretty good,” the late, great Cohen once recalled.

Dylan, on the other hand, has happily called Cohen a “genius“, which puts him in a league with Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder when it comes to the musicians he has bestowed that title upon. However, it isn’t just the depth, sincerity and seamless guile of Cohen’s poetry that the original vagabond pines over. He also adores his sense of duplicity, another facet that both men used to subvert the tired tropes of pop and conjure the twist of irony.

Cohen not only achieves this through his carefully considered words, but he crafts a two-hander effect through his clever changes in melody and key.

As Dylan explains, “When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius.”

“Even the counterpoint lines,” the ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ singer continued, “they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs.” Cohen’s works are studied tomes where every line is a world unto itself, married to the music in such a way that one informs the other, predetermined by what came before and what will follow, like all the finest poetry.

The real beauty of Leonard Cohen lies in this conspiracy between his words and melodies. “As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music,” Dylan proclaimed.

And he picked out one song that proves the great genius. “Even the simplest song, like ‘The Law,’ which is structured on two fundamental chords, has counterpoint lines that are essential, and anybody who even thinks about doing this song and loves the lyrics would have to build around the counterpoint lines.”

The song, from his 1984 album Various Positions, looks at the nature of fallibility and how we’re all at the mercy of something. But along the way, the push and pull of the simple melody and sudden jostles create tension and mystery throughout the song.

As Cohen croons the Dylan-like lines, “Now the deal has been dirty since dirty began, I’m not asking for mercy, not from the man / You just don’t ask for mercy while you’re still on the stand”.

Meanwhile, another underrated aspect of Cohen takes centre stage: he doesn’t sing it, he performs it like a matinee idol. The words are intoned in a manner that urges you to pick them apart. It is a simple element of showmanship that elevates songwriting, separating it from poetry, but so many singers favour purely sounding ‘nice’.

All in all, ‘The Law’ is a masterful song, one of many in Cohen’s discography, and while it may not be among the very strongest, according to Dylan, it offers the easiest illumination of Cohen’s subtle strengths.

These strengths are the ones that emboldened the unrivalled poetry that made him a genius. And considering he likened Dylan to Everest, you can guess that he learnt a lot of tricks from the original vagabond to begin with.