Music Nerd Primer: The Songwriting Legacy of Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen spent five years writing “Hallelujah.” Over a half-decade, he composed more than 80 verses. One of the discarded lines goes like this: When David played, his fingers bled, he wept for every word he said. A line this good would have been the best line in any other song.

Columbia Records rejected the album Various Positions. The label president said to Cohen, “Look, Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.” A major record label heard “Hallelujah” and still said no, thank you. Various Positions was released on an independent label.

Five years had lapsed between Cohen’s previous album, Recent Songs (1979), and Various Positions (1984). His voice was changing. It was, as he said, “deepening.” A Casio keyboard replaced the Spanish guitar he usually composed on. The notebooks multiplied with mounting verses. Even before the world heard “Hallelujah,” it was taking on a life of its own. 

Born in Canada, Cohen was a poet and novelist first. After several collections of poetry and two novels, he moved to the U.S. to pursue life as a folk singer. He hung around Andy Warhol for a bit, then Judy Collins had a hit with his song “Suzanne.” It began as a poem in 1966 called “Suzanne Takes You Down.” Collins recorded the song the same year. Cohen released “Suzanne” as the first single from his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967). Nina Simone and Joan Baez each covered the song. It endures as one of his best. 

John Hammond, who signed Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, signed Cohen to Columbia Records. Songs of Leonard Cohen wasn’t well-received by critics, though it found an audience in the UK. A cult audience eventually grew around Cohen in the U.S. He released his second album, Songs from a Room, in 1969. The album opener, “Bird on a Wire,” was recorded in Nashville. Cohen described it as a country song. Collins recorded a more pronounced country version in 1968. When Kris Kristofferson heard “Bird on a Wire,” he told Cohen he was putting the opening lines on his tombstone. 

In 1971, director Robert Altman used three Cohen songs in his film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The film, which Altman called anti-Western, is considered one of the great films in its genre of all time. Cohen’s songs are crucial to Altman’s masterpiece. 

By the late ’70s, Cohen had reinvented his sound. His fifth studio album, Death of a Ladies’ Man, was produced by Phil Spector. His previous album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, began a move away from traditional folk. But the songs were still grounded by Cohen’s Spanish guitar. Cohen, at this time, wasn’t selling a lot of albums. Spector was becoming unpredictable. His Wall of Sound replaced Cohen’s signature Spanish guitar on Death of a Ladies’ Man. U.S. critics dismissed the album. 

With Recent Songs in 1979, Cohen went back to his folk roots. Critics viewed the album as a return to form. Emmylou Harris covered “Ballad of the Absent Mare” on her 1993 album Cowgirl’s Prayer. She retitled the song “Ballad of a Runaway Horse.”

After Recent Songs, Cohen began working on his defining song. “Hallelujah” appeared in 1984 with the release of Various Positions. In “Dance Me to the End of Love,” Cohen wrote about the string quartets that accompanied Nazi death camps. Classical music played during the horrors of the Holocaust. 

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Framing one of history’s darkest moments as a love song, is Cohen homing in on the human perspective. He was a seeker. His fascination with Judaism and Buddhism was one of constant searching. 

“Hallelujah” is draped with biblical imagery. It’s about transcendence and spiritual ecstasy. But it’s also about lust. Cohen’s gift was exploring the complexities of the human experience. He wrote with dry wit while accompanying the listener like a passenger. Like his poems, his song lyrics were part philosophy, part observation of the riddles of human existence.

John Cale’s 1991 version of “Hallelujah” was more popular than the original. Cohen sent Cale pages of additional lyrics. And Cale’s version inspired Jeff Buckley to record his own—arguably the most definitive—interpretation. Rufus Wainwright and Brandi Carlile have sung it beautifully, too. Most covers of “Hallelujah” are based on the John Cale version. It reached an even greater audience when it appeared in the 2001 animated film Shrek. It has tactlessly become a feature of singing competition shows and weddings. 

New York Times critic A. O. Scott wrote, “Hallelujah is one of those rare songs that survives its banalization with at least some of its sublimity intact.”

The following verse didn’t appear in the Cohen original. But Cale pulled it and other verses from Cohen’s notebook. 

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
And it’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold, and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen never really abandoned literature—he just put it to music. Bob Dylan compared him to Irving Berlin. And it wasn’t only Cohen’s lyrics that impressed Dylan. He crafted perfect melodies with an imperfect voice. 

“You Want It Darker” was Cohen’s 14th studio album. He died 17 days after its release in 2016. He’d released one of his greatest albums at age 82. Leonard Cohen was a Renaissance man. He found wisdom by a lifetime of searching. Thankfully, he wrote it all down. 

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Photo by John Shearer/WireImage