The songwriter David Gilmour called “the best lyricist”
Whilst David Gilmour is best known for his efforts on the guitar, he’s also an accomplished lyricist, something he has shown across his career with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist. Taking cues from some of the best poets out there, the Cambridge native formed his own distinctive approach to lyrical composition.
However, there was one specific artist who had a tremendous impact on Gilmour: the late Leonard Cohen. Notably, the Canadian is one of the finest wordsmiths music has ever seen, with a strong argument that Cohen takes the top spot over Bob Dylan as the world’s most lyrically gifted songwriter. He was a man who kept a consistent ream of impressive work until he died in 2016. The likes of Songs of Leonard Cohen, Death of a Ladies’ Man, and Recent Songs rank among his best works, but is perhaps best known in the mainstream for the song ‘Hallelujah’, which Jeff Buckley made his own the following decade.
In 2021, David Gilmour spoke to Rolling Stone about performing a selection of Leonard Cohen tracks during a pandemic livestream, including ‘Marianne’, ‘If It Be Your Will’ and ‘So Long’. Here, the Pink Floyd man outlined how great of a guitarist Cohen was before maintaining that he’s “the best lyricist” he could think of.
Gilmour said: “One thing I did learn is how bloody good he is as a guitar player. You tend to think of singer-songwriters as people who are just using the guitar accompaniment to carry the words that they’re doing, but Leonard was an absolutely brilliantly accomplished guitar player in fingerstyle things that I just cannot do. And, of course, he’s about the best lyricist that I know of.”
This was not the first time that David Gilmour had bestowed lofty praise upon Leonard Cohen. In 2000, he was featured in a webcast and partook in a conversation encompassing both Pink Floyd and his solo career. At one point, the ‘Wish You Were Here’ vocalist was asked to name his favourite single from the 1990s. He chose 1992’s ‘Closing Time’ by Leonard Cohen, explaining: “I spent a lot of time trying to analyse those lyrics”.
When speaking to Dotmusic two years later, Gilmour was asked to elaborate on his naming ‘Closing Time’ as his favourite single from the previous decade. Mentioning the song’s lyrics again, he also called the album it’s from, The Future “great”. He said: “That was a great album by Leonard Cohen. I really liked the whole album and that song. I spent a lot of time trying to analyse what the lyrics meant”.
Listen to ‘Closing Time’ by Leonard Cohen below.
