The songwriter Leonard Cohen thought was in their own league: “Unparalleled”
Though he found worldwide fame as a singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen‘s initial devotion was not to music but to literature.
A renowned poet and a devourer of books, Cohen became one of his native Canada’s prospective geniuses of prose. It would only be later down the line, in an attempt to spread his words further, that the notion of introducing music to his poetry would lead him to become one of the most highly acclaimed lyricists of his generation.
Aside from a voracious appetite for literature, Cohen has always pitched himself as something akin to a “poet with music”. His songs unfurl like the odes of forgotten scribes, and his most famous song, ‘Hallelujah’ is the perfect testament to this style, with the original version simply spilling across the airwaves with verse after verse. It’s fair to say that Cohen, perhaps more so than most, knows a thing or two about being a good lyricist. While he rarely shared much admiration for other songwriters, there was one musician who he said was “unparalleled”.
Bob Dylan’s skills as a songwriter are rarely forgotten by the musicians who followed him. From The Beatles to every modern band out there, Dylan’s work is a seismic milestone for most musicians’ creativity. His ability to weave words through song has not only seen him garner critical applause for six decades but a Nobel Prize, too.
It is an indeterminate ‘I’ll go my way, you go yours’ attitude to songwriting that has admittedly thrown up some tracks like ‘Wiggle Wiggle’ that should have been shot at birth and perhaps our ranking hints that he is at his very best when spewing words over an acoustic. Still, the kaleidoscopic beauty of buttressing brilliantly berserk songs like ‘Jokerman’ with two chords and the perfunctory presence of a simple heartfelt soul is what has made his six-decade music career so beautiful. It’s fair to say that Cohen also saw the wild talent of the freewheelin’ troubadour.
During the clip below, Cohen is effusive in his praise for the singer-songwriter, boldly claiming: “Bob Dylan is a figure that arises every three or four hundred years who represents & embodies all the finest aspirations of the human heart. He is unparalleled in the world of music and will remain a torch for all singers and all hearts for many generations to come.”
He doesn’t stop there, either, proudly stating Dylan’s seismic impact on the world of music and beyond: “I don’t think there is as beautiful a spirit, in America, who has risen for many generations. And I doubt if as beautiful a spirit will arise for many generations. We are privileged to be in the company of one of the greatest hearts that has spoken of the heart in America for a long, long time.”
The admiration was shared. Dylan is also notoriously shy about giving away too much of an opinion in public. However, Dylan did share one sentiment with the Canadian: “Dylan says to me, ‘As far as I’m concerned, Leonard, you’re number one. I’m number zero.’” Before adding his own ironic take on the words: “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.”
To try and compare the two men is to say one star in the universe is the same as any other. Sure, they are built of similar things, but the wondrous worlds and debris that orbit them can feel lightyears apart. Cohen and Dylan were poetic and personal, but their expressions ranked in very different places. Dylan became a burning icon right from the off, while Cohen’s impact would creep into view over decades.
However, speaking in The New York Times in 2016, Dylan reflected on the work of Cohen: “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.” Dylan concluded: “As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music.”
With Dylan regularly covering Cohen’s work and the ‘Suzanne’ singer perhaps giving Dylan the greatest compliment of his career, we can be safe in the knowledge that two of the world’s greatest lyric writers were brothers in literary arms.
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