The song Leonard Cohen wouldn’t lower his bar for: “I can’t believe that”
Given the consistency of his output throughout his career, you get the feeling that Leonard Cohen was often reluctant to settle for anything less than what he considered to be a perfect representation of his current artistic ambitions. Where many artists whose careers have spanned several decades as his did, their output was often much more prolific, whereas Cohen only released new material when he felt it was absolutely necessary.
Later in his career, his releases became even more sporadic, but that didn’t mean he was becoming less interested or losing his artistic touch. In fact, his later material was just as considered as his early classics, such as Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs of Love and Hate, and his reinvention as a crooning synthpop artist turned out to be a remarkably fitting change of pace for the ageing singer-songwriter.
The release of Ten New Songs in 2001 was as straightforward as the title suggested: a no-nonsense return after nine years of quiet since the release of his previous effort, The Future. Continuing with some of the synth-pop sounds while also pivoting back towards his contemporary folk and soft rock leanings at times, the record is considered to be among his finest releases. With the aid of singer Sharon Robinson, the album’s combination of her smooth vocals against his increasingly gravelly tones, there’s plenty of tender beauty to be found on the album.
However, when it came to assembling the tracklist for the record, he was just as pernickety about which songs ought to make the cut, and there was one notable song from the album that was so close to not making it onto the final release. Assuming the title itself wasn’t already a concrete decision, we could’ve been blessed with Nine New Songs, but after some convincing, the song he was uncertain about eventually found its way onto the album.
Featuring just beyond the halfway point is ‘Alexandra Leaving’, a track that Cohen based around the Constantine P Cavafy poem, ‘The God Abandons Antony’, switching up the references to Roman history by basing the song on a woman named Alexandra. While the lyrics are typically poetic coming from Cohen, he was initially not keen on the idea of recording his adaptation for the record.
However, it was Robinson who managed to talk him around to including it on the tracklist, and in an interview with Uncut, she revealed that it took a lot of convincing. “Leonard didn’t feel that it fit the record,” she recalled. “Then, towards the end of making Ten New Songs, we listen to it again. and he realised that he really liked it and that it should be on the record. He referred to it many times over the years. ‘You know, we almost didn’t put that song on the album. I can’t believe that!’ But unless it felt right to him, he wasn’t going to lower his bar, put out anything he wasn’t completely happy with.”
Cohen may have been a fussy perfectionist, but at least he was able to see the light when it came to acknowledging that there were merits to this particular song, and the album is all the more complete with it included in the tracklist.
