The song it took Leonard Cohen 40 years to record and he still didn’t get it right
Good things come to those who wait, or so the saying goes. Within the context of the music industry, however, everything is moving forward so quickly that ideas can become lost if they take too long to materialise. That certainly seems to be the case with Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, who spent decades working on one specific song, only for its final rendition to be pretty disappointing.
Cohen, of course, is among the greatest lyricists to ever grace the airwaves. Crafting a plethora of profound, poetic songs that continue to resonate with audiences decades later, the Westmount-born musician seemed to have an innate ability to make any song feel incredibly moving and emotional. Throughout his career as a writer, some of those groundbreaking ideas came to Cohen fully formed and ready to go, whereas others required years of hard work and toil to truly perfect.
Luckily, Cohen was afforded many years to work on his craft, boasting a discography which stretched over half a century. Looking back upon his work, certain works stand out among the rest, usually for their compelling lyricism, whereas others seem to slip away into the background. With 15 solo studio albums to his name, it is inevitable that some of Cohen’s work is more endearing than the rest, but it must be noted that the songwriter put just as much work into those songs as his greatest.
In fact, some of these lesser-loved songs required much more work from Cohen than legendary compositions like ‘Suzanne’ or ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. On his 2014 record Popular Problems, the songwriter finally released ‘Born In Chains, a song that he had debuted during a live performance in 2010 but had started working on some four decades earlier. Speaking around the time of the album’s release, Cohen revealed, “That’s been kicking around for forty years.”
So, what took him so long? According to the songwriter, ‘Born In Chains’ has gone through numerous different re-writes and atmosphere changes, owing largely to Cohen’s ever-changing relationship with religion and philosophy. “I’ve rewritten the lyric many times to accommodate the changes in my theological position, which is very insecure,” he shared.
Cohen was born a Jew and was raised in accordance with the Jewish faith for much of his adolescence. However, the songwriter forged a connection to multiple different avenues of faith and theology over the years. He had a keen interest in Zen Buddhism and was ordained as a Buddhist monk back in 1996. Elsewhere, he studied the philosophy of Hinduism and Gnosticism at different points during his life.
At one point, during the early 1970s, Cohen even become briefly enthralled with the cult of sicentology, inspiring one of his most notable compositioons, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. By the time he came to release Popular Problems, however, the artist’s take on theology and philosophy had settled down somewhat, with Cohen reaching old age. Nevertheless, he still did not think the final product was all that convincing.
“The chords kind of interest me, and we came up with this pure gospel version,” he said of ‘Born In Chains’. “It’s the one song on the album I’m not 100 per cent behind. I didn’t nail it, but I’ve got a thumbtack in it.” While Cohen might be at risk of being too hard on himself there, it is fair to say that he had set a higher songwriting standard throughout his discography than the vast majority of his peers.
