by Holt, Jason
Used by permission.
BALLAD OF THE ABSENT MARE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1979 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
BIRD ON THE WIRE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1969 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
CLOSING TIME
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1992 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
COME HEALING
Written by Leonard Cohen & Patrick Leonard © 2012 Old Ideas LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Old Ideas LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
DEMOCRACY
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1992 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
EVERYBODY KNOWS
Written by Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson © 1988 Sony/ATV Songs LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1971 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1988 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
HALLELUJAH
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1984 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
HEY THAT’S NO WAY TO SAY GOODBYE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1967 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
IF IT BE YOUR WILL
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1984 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
I’M YOUR MAN
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1988 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
IN MY SECRET LIFE
Written by Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson © 2001 Sony/ATV Songs LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1974 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
LOVE ITSELF
Written by Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson © 2001 Sony/ATV Songs LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
LOVER LOVER LOVER
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1974 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
MEMORIES
Written by Leonard Cohen & Phil Spector © 1977 Sony/ATV Songs LLC, Abkco Music Inc., & Mother Bertha Music Inc.
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
NIGHT COMES ON
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1984 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
NIGHTINGALE
Written by Leonard Cohen & Anjani Thomas © 2004 Old Ideas LLC & Little Fountain Music All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
SHOW ME THE PLACE
Written by Leonard Cohen & Patrick Leonard © 2012 Old Ideas LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Old Ideas LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
SO LONG MARIANNE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1967 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
STORY OF ISAAC
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1969 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
SUZANNE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1967 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Str
eet,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
TAKE THIS LONGING
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1974 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
TENNESSEE WALTZ
Written by Pee Wee King & Redd Stewart, Additional verse by Leonard Cohen © 1948 Sony/ATV Acuff Rose Music All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
THE FAITH
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 2004 Old Ideas LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
THE FUTURE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1992 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
THE GUESTS
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1979 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
THE LAND OF PLENTY
Written by Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson © 2001 Sony/ATV Songs LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
THE STRANGER SONG
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1967 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
THE WINDOW
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1979 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
THERE FOR YOU
Written by Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson © 2004 Old Ideas LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Old Ideas LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
THERE IS A WAR
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1974 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
TOWER OF SONG
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1988 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
VILLANELLE FOR OUR TIME
Written by Leonard Cohen & Frank Scott © 2004 Old Ideas LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Old Ideas LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
WAITING FOR THE MIRACLE
Written by Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson © 1992 Sony/ATV Songs LLC & Publisher(s) Unknown
All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
WHO BY FIRE
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1974 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
YOU KNOW WHO I AM
Written by Leonard Cohen
© 1969 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC., 424 Church Street,
Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Excerpts also from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Copyright © 1993 Leonard Cohen. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
The Pop Star–Poet Paradox
JASON HOLT
There seems to be a contradiction between Leonard Cohen the pop star and Leonard Cohen the poet. The pop star was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; the poet refused Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award. On some level, these two facets don’t seem to go together, as if Cohen has a split artistic personality. Think of his portrait on the Recent Songs album cover (1979): the two bilateral halves, put together, do look like him, although the face is noticeably asymmetrical. No stranger to tension and duality, “the stranger” appears particularly tailor-suited to such visual representation.
There’s nothing altogether unusual about starting out in one line and shifting later to another. From a certain point of view, that’s in fact what Cohen did. He started out as a poet, a worker in literature, and then became primarily a worker in song. Nor is there anything strange about a musician publishing poetry. Plenty of popular musicians have done so: Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Jewel, Tupac Shakur. Others, like Patti Smith and Jim Carroll, have achieved a notable presence as poets and even some critical cachet. It is, though, clear enough, if not entirely uncontroversial, that Leonard Cohen ranks supreme as the quintessential pop star–poet. We can leave aside the related issue of the poetics of popular song lyrics—the metrical appeal of Chuck Berry, for instance—or including spoken word pieces on albums à la Ani DiFranco.
Preeminence as a pop star–poet is only one of many things that make Leonard Cohen a paradoxical figure, one of the most enigmatic, mysterious, and compelling in all of pop music. He’s a Canadian, of all things, but with international appeal. Cohen is utterly depressing, but wickedly funny. He’s deadly serious, but somehow above it all, lighthearted; nostalgic and yet hopeful; hopeful but resigned; unremittingly cruel, yet undeniably gentle; unblinkingly realistic, yet almost blindly romantic; a Jew but seemingly Christian; Judeo-Christian but Buddhist. He speaks eloquently of silence, and his silence speaks volumes, illuminating darkness even as it swallows up the light. He shouldn’t be—but somehow is—so much fun.
These tensions, these dualities are paradoxes only in a mild sense. A more strict sense limits paradoxes to apparently inescapable, genuine contradictions—where it seems logically impossible to have both things at once, and yet it seems we do have them. To take a common example, if I write “This sentence is false,” that’s paradoxical because assuming it’s true (the world is as the sentence says), then it’s false, and if it’s false (the world isn’t so), then it’s true. It’s not just in the mild sense that Leonard Cohen is paradoxical. He’s also paradoxical
in the stricter sense. The pop star–poet paradox isn’t that Cohen writes poetry and popular music, but rather that his songs count both as poetry and as popular music.
Why is this a paradox? There’s a presumed hard distinction between so-called high and popular art. Where poetry is a high art, folk or pop music is deemed a popular art, lower if not lowbrow. Actually, any art form will have highbrow and popular varieties. Music, for instance, has both highbrow varieties (classical, opera), and less “refined” popular types (country, rock). Poetry, too, may be seen as having comparatively popular varieties like rap alongside its more rarefied, and to popular tastes often less engaging, traditional examples: Drake and Blake. It’s not just philosophers, but most of us, who consider the distinction absolute in that any artwork will count either as high art or as popular entertainment—but never both.
We can now see the potential paradox in the music of Leonard Cohen. It’s not simply a matter of setting poetry to music, although that sometimes was the process, but the fact that the songs themselves count both as traditional poetry (high art) and folk or pop music (popular art). From a poetic perspective, Cohen’s songs are unquestionably a cut above—too good, in a way, for popular music. Still, folk and pop, Cohen’s musical genres, are decidedly popular. Cohen’s songs appear to transcend and yet still remain within the genres they inhabit.
Film theorists sometimes appeal to something called “auteur theory” to explain how in some cases movies, a typically popular art form, can be transformed into high art when a great filmmaker expresses a singular vision. In the films of Alfred Hitchcock, for instance, we have popular movie genres—the thriller, the horror, the film noir—elevated beyond the confines of more generic examples. Similar to a literary author (auteur), the creative control and exacting standards of the genius filmmaker allow them to make high art out of what, in ordinary hands, would be merely popular art. In such cases, the label “popular art,” however popular the work itself may be, is effectively inapplicable.
We might think of resolving the pop star–poet paradox for Cohen by thinking that he’s also an auteur—and not just because he’s literally an author—that he transcends the limits of folk and pop music to create high art out of popular material (see Boucher’s book, Dylan and Cohen, pp. 75–77), just as Hitchcock does with the thriller. That’s one possibility. Here’s another: though the poetry of Cohen’s songs makes them high art, the musical profiles of these songs don’t allow them any supra-popular transubstantiation. They’re folk, or pop, glorious but not transcendent. Perhaps this is unlike Hitchcock, though perhaps here too the paradox that auteur theory seems to help resolve remains intact.