The album aimed at making Leonard Cohen an “international” superstar: “We thought we’d really done it”
Leonard Cohen, the global superstar. It has a nice ring to it. Immediately, though, the reaction is to somewhat laugh at the suggestion, as in this modern age, the idea of a poetic folk artist being at the dizzying top of notoriety feels so far from reality. But back in Cohen’s own era, it wasn’t out of reach.
Music has changed a lot. By now, the biggest stars are typically pop stars. They’re commercial darlings, kings and queens of the radio, putting out songs that hook you in instantly. Mostly, they put out songs that require little thinking, and are often quickly made to cash in on a viral moment or ride a trending wave.
But go back a few decades, and it couldn’t be any more different. Go back to 1965, and Bob Dylan was topping the charts with ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, a six-minute-long folk tune of spiralling verses. Maybe it’s a cliche to lean into, but back then, music seemed to have more to it. In a world before quick and easy access to songs, listeners seemed willing to invest more into hearing something great, rather than just hearing something catchy.
There’s also the fact that in the 1960s and ‘70s, the folk rock set were the stars. With Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and all of that lot, people with acoustic guitars were on top, and during his initial breakout, Cohen was amongst them. The issue comes when the ‘70s were over and the world had moved on. Suddenly, it was the mid-1980s, and Cohen and his team were still vying for a total industry takeover. But they were arguably doing it too late by the time Various Positions came around.
“The assignment was to release an album with one or two momentous songs that would make Leonard international, and we thought we’d really done it,” producer John Lissauer. To some degree, they did succeed. “I didn’t say to Leonard, ‘Go write some anthems,’ it just happened. Especially ‘Dance Me…'” he said, and side one begins with that first try at a hit, ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’, which quickly became one of the artist’s most defining tracks thanks to its luxurious grandeur.
But the power sits at the start of side two, when Cohen finally unleashed ‘Hallelujah’, the track he’d been working on for years on end. Hashed out through apparently over 100 drafts, the release of this track was the finale of a lot of work.
It did pay off though? Yes and no. Upon its initial release, ‘Hallelujah’ got moderate attention. But as the years have gone on, Cohen’s classic has become one of the most beloved songs ever written. It did make him international, but not in the immediate fame way his team likely expected, or wanted.
All in all though, Various Positions didn’t do what they wanted it to. It barely charted, and it doesn’t even make the top ten in a list of the artist’s best-selling records. But with how spanning love for ‘Hallelujah’ is today, perhaps in some way, it did what it was meant to, only years later and with the help of other artists.
