“Trashy”: Why Leonard Cohen couldn’t stand a certain type of songwriter
One thing that enhances Leonard Cohen’s legacy is that he was always an elusive figure; someone whose shadowy presence was more intriguing than vapid, and who was quite literally built for a different time entirely, even when his words and contributions make complete sense in the worlds they emerged from.
One thing that also made him more striking than most was that his art was incredibly transparent. Most of it came from a real place or was inspired by real people, and he’d very rarely change these specific details whenever they appeared in his songs. He also, by his own admission, never really had a specific purpose or a real destination in mind whenever he’d embark on different journeys, but that, in essence, was the whole point.
This view also gave him a strange perception of himself, especially in his latter years. For instance, although he was always painfully aware of his own outsider positioning, he realised, later in his life and career, that his approach had become satirised by peers and listeners alike, with people viewing him as, in his own words, someone who is “suicidal, melancholy, and self-indulgent”.
However, his words were rarely conducive to an overly depressed, dismissive mindset – rather, they sought to spotlight Cohen’s own desire to break free from his trappings, and in turn make others feel seen, even if he didn’t overtly offer any sort of respite or promise that things would get better. As a result, his words were sanitised, poetic with gritty flair, and totally and completely honest, making them melancholic without feeling pointlessly gloomy.
In music today, we see artists struggle to strike this balance across all genres. Often, poetic lyricism is watered down with either verbosity or underwhelming bluntness, lacking what Cohen described as the “salutary effect” that makes people feel relieved, even when the words themselves are sad. In his own music, however, this effect only occurs in certain people; for others, “It has the opposite effect” and makes them feel depressed.
Looking around, Cohen saw the same failures in many of his peers. In 1973, he told The New York Times why he felt that songwriters like Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Carole King, and Carly Simon weren’t really the right way to go about achieving what his music always did, saying, “I can’t stand it. Rock has become so wordy and inane. So trashy.”
At the time, Cohen had also been “blackening pages” for what would eventually become New Skin for the Old Ceremony. Specifically, he’d been working on ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’, and mentioned how he’d just come up with the verse, “Those were the reason an’ that was New York / We were runnin’ for the money and the flesh / An’ that was called love for the workers in song / Probably still is for those of them left.”
A song about a brief encounter with Janis Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel – where the interview also took place – ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’ captured Cohen at a specific time in his life, when he’d fallen into a pattern of being more direct and explicit about his experiences and reflections than ever before. His views on other songwriters, therefore, indicated a broader awareness about his own output, signalling a desire to be as honest as possible in the art he was making.
That said, it also more broadly proved how committed he always was to proving his own mantra that poetry is just the evidence of life. Within that belief, it didn’t matter if it emerged a little raw or uncomfortable to reckon with, as in a way, it only became more impactful to expose these experiences in their truest forms, untouched by artificial or so-called poetic embellishments.
