“The simplest song”: The song Bob Dylan thought showed off Leonard Cohen’s genius
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 wisked in a revolution of depth and sincerity in the realm of pop songs.
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.
As Paul Simon once said of Dylan, ”One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere. I’ve tried to sound ironic. I don’t. I can’t. Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time. I sound sincere every time.” Cohen achieves this same two-hander play effect through his clever twists of 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—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 it. “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. Meanwhile, another underrated aspect of Cohen takes centre stage: he doesn’t sing it, he performs it like a matinee idol.
It’s 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—the ones that emboldened his unrivalled poetry that made him a genius.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.