‘Anthem’: Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece ruined by Rebecca De Mornay
There is never going to be a period when Leonard Cohen’s work doesn’t move people. Regardless of who is listening, their taste in music, and how familiar they are with the musician, there is something in his raw voice, poetry, and vulnerability that is difficult not to be touched by. Individuality is a significant driving factor behind Cohen’s success and universal appeal, but this was taken away on the 1992 track ‘Anthem’.
Cohen and beautiful songs have come together on so many occasions that they are more or less synonymous with one another at this point. Learning he wanted to be a poet before a musician is the least surprising thing about him, as the lyrics in songs such as ‘Avalanche’, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ and ‘Hallelujah’ all read like words from the mind of the most profound penman. As such, when you read the lyrics of ‘Anthem’, or listen beyond the production, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when you find yourself moved.
Lines like “The wars they will be fought again / The holy dove, she will be caught again / Bought and sold, and bought again / The dove is never free” are beautiful and subscribe to the classic and poetic nature that follows Cohen’s music like a shadow. With that in mind, it’s a shame when listening to the song that it is ruined by incredibly poor production, courtesy of the actor Rebecca De Mornay—production that grates cheap ‘white cheese’ over a Michelin Star dish.
The two initially crossed paths in 1987 and dated each other for some time; they were even briefly engaged. Cohen confesses that he was immediately attracted to Mornay and found himself besotted, lost in her beauty and charisma. “When I met Rebecca [De Mornay] all kinds of thoughts came into my mind,” he said, “As how could they not when faced with a woman of such beauty?”
The pinnacle of Cohen’s love for Mornay came on the album The Future, which she produced and is dedicated to her. While the sentiment is sweet, Mornay falls victim to many clichés buried within music in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, which means that Cohen’s sound is stripped of its originality and instead sounds like bad remixes of good Leonard Cohen songs.
‘Anthem’ is one of the most poignant examples of this. Mornay describes hearing Cohen playing it and the moment he asked her to produce the record. “Leonard was at my house, and I had a synthesiser. He was off in a room, playing a song that I’d heard him play over and over for a couple of years, that he just wasn’t sure what to do with.”
Mornay realised, however, that the version he was playing this time sounded slightly different, “I went in and said, ‘That’s it! Exactly like that!’ I think he’d moved the lyrics around because they’d never had that effect on me before. I said, ‘It’s universal, I’m telling you, like ‘Silent Night’ or ‘Auld Lang Syne’, so why don’t we bring in a gospel choir?’” She recalls Cohen’s response, “He turned and looked at me very strangely, and he said, ‘I want you to produce this song’.”
When you listen to most music, you can hazard a guess at the time when it was made. A general stab in the dark, such as the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, a lot of the time, won’t steer you far wrong. Cohen steps out of that boundary. He is one of the most illustrious musicians on the planet, as his songs sound like they could have been written yesterday or before the camera was invented. Oil paintings for album covers as his style transcends all time and belongs to itself and only itself. That illusion is shattered when cliches of the time are introduced, and Cohen’s music is dragged from outside the realms of time and planted firmly into a specific moment.
The song is beautiful, there is no doubt about it, but the production is too complicated and unnecessary. The things that make Cohen’s music so perfect, his raw energy and poetry, diminish in the face of synth sounds, bongos, and a choir. These were all relatively popular additions to tracks at the time, so it’s understandable how they ended up in the song, but they weren’t necessary, and they take away from what we love about Cohen.
