Reducing the vast musical legacy of Leonard Cohen to just 20 tracks is an immense challenge, as many exceptional pieces inevitably remain outside the list. Yet, looking back a decade after his final recording and his death, we can trace the arc of a career that spanned profound introspection and raw human emotion.
Opening the list at number 20 is “First We Take Manhattan” (1988).
While the synth-heavy production on the “I’m Your Man” album drew criticism from collaborators like Anjani Thomas, the opening track remains a success. Its Pet Shop Boys-influenced arrangement contrasts sharply with Cohen’s gruff vocals, creating a palpable sense of brooding menace. At number 19, “Going Home” (2011) marked a triumphant return to form for Cohen following a period of financial hardship and the lackluster “Dear Heather” (2004). Opening the “Old Ideas” album, the song features a witty self-portrait in which his muse labels the singer a “lazy bastard in a suit.” Seven years – and a personal financial crisis – after 2004’s half-hearted Dear Heather, Cohen returned to the studio with his powers freshly marshalled. Cohen found writing a trying experience – lurid stories abound of him beating his head against the floor while working on Hallelujah.
The 1977 album “Death of a Ladies’ Man” has been described by the artist as “a catastrophe,” an assessment likely colored by the difficult, substance-fueled recording sessions with producer Phil Spector. Despite its troubled creation, it holds gems like “Memories” (18), a track Cohen often revisited in live performances, and the title track, “Death of a Ladies’ Man” (15), where the heavy production actually serves to enhance the song’s mood. Moving to 2014, “Almost Like the Blues” (17) captured a master staring down his own mortality on the eve of his 80th birthday, reflecting on human cruelty and even including a jab at Richard Dawkins. Which perhaps reflected more on its drug- and booze-soaked recording with dangerously erratic producer Phil Spector than the finished album, cohen famously called his 1977 LP Death of a Ladies’ Man “a catastrophe”. Certainly, he maintained an understandable fondness for the rock’n’roll-influenced Memories, often performing it live. Moreover, the weight of Spector’s arrangement, the way it causes the tempo to drag, seems to complement rather than suffocate its mood.
The turn of the millennium brought “A Thousand Kisses Deep” (16), released on the 2001 album “Ten New Songs.” Created with collaborator Sharon Robinson, the track is a beautiful, chanson-style meditation on time. Near the end of his life, Cohen delivered “You Want It Darker” (14), released just weeks before his passing. It stands as one of the most poised and haunting final works in music history, with the title track offering a complex, thorny examination of faith as he sang, “I’m ready, my Lord.” But one with much to commend it, it’s an outlier in Cohen’s catalogue. Largely recorded in collaborator Sharon Robinson’s garage and packaged in a sleeve featuring a selfie, Ten New Songs was an understated return to recording after Cohen’s five years of Buddhist study, shruggingly titled. You Want It Darker (2016). But in truth, it’s just one among a plethora of memorable lines in the song’s gospel-infused paean to hope and human imperfection, a song he later suggested represented “everything my whole work and life had gathered aro.
Mid-career highlights include “Chelsea Hotel #2” (13), a poignant eulogy for a past tryst with Janis Joplin that captures an era losing its optimism. The biting “Everybody Knows” (12) remains a masterful piece of social commentary, mixing a bleak worldview with dark humor, while “Avalanche” (11) from 1971 serves as the claustrophobic centerpiece of the dark “Songs of Love and Hate” album—a song Nick Cave has cited as a fundamental pillar of his own artistic identity. In which a brief tryst with Janis Joplin – “We fell into each other’s arms through a process of elimination,” he later recalled – turns into a kind of eulogy, not just for the late singer, but for the era in which they met. Chelsea Hotel #2 (1974). Rock stars of a certain vintage were wont to write despairing state-of-the-world addresses in the late 80s – Lou Reed’s New York is full of them – but Everybody Knows is a cut above, its relentlessly bleak worldview leav. A relentless, shimmering guitar figure, a confusing but compelling tumble of imagery, with his voice at its most poisonous, avalanche is its claustrophobic heart.
The latter half of the top ten features “Dance Me to the End of Love” (10), inspired by the harrowing history of wartime concentration camp orchestras, and “The Future” (9), a 1992 track that feels chillingly prophetic in its depiction of extreme, defensive global attitudes. “Tower of Song” (8) remains a favorite among fellow artists for its raw, vivid depiction of the struggle to write music, while “Anthem” (7) contains perhaps his most famous lyric: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Inspired by the story of the Lagerkapellen – concentration camp orchestras whose music accompanied forced labour and executions – there’s something eerie about Dance Me to the End of Love’s klezmer-inspired melody and lyrical pleas for lifelong fealty. The latter are filled with intimations of darkness; it’s never entirely clear that love will overcome them. “I’ve seen the future, baby, and it’s murder”: Cohen’s apocalyptic response to the sociopolitical upheavals of the early 90s – most obviously the Los Angeles riots – depicted a world in which “attitudes are all extremist and they’re all defensive”. Dance Me to the End of Love (1984). It sounds grimly prophetic, its upbeat soft-rock backing only serving to amplify the unease, thirty-four years on. Mordantly funny Tower of Song, which has often struck a chord with other artists, covered by everyone from Phoebe Bridgers to Tom Jones to the Jesus and Mary Chain, he poured it all into the thrillingly vivid.
Rounding out the top tier, “I’m Your Man” (6) masterfully uses a low-rent, cheesy synth backing to emphasize a song about emotional desperation and abasement. “Hallelujah” (5) has transcended its initial rejection by record labels to become one of the most famous songs in existence, its power surviving despite its frequent use in media. Not by begging on his knees,” he notes in a moment of clarity, then carries on regardless, its emotional tone shifts from lustful to desperate to hopeless: “A man never got a woman back. Of all things, a cover by John Cale that appeared on the soundtrack of Shrek – is fascinating, hallelujah’s progress from an album Cohen’s US record label refused to release to his most famous song – via.
The list concludes with early classics: “So Long, Marianne” (4) showcases Cohen’s early affinity for Nashville-style songwriting, “Bird on the Wire” (3) remains a timeless anthem of authentic defeat, “Suzanne” (2) stands as an enduring masterpiece of his debut, and “Famous Blue Raincoat” (1) claims the top spot for its unparalleled emotional depth.
