Leonard Cohen and Philosophy

by Holt, Jason

  Beforehand, though, we should get a few things straight. When we talk about Cohen’s singing, we should be clear which voice we’re talking about: the early baritone (1960s–’70s), or the later bass (1980s–’90s), which are, if both recognizably Cohen, markedly different. The first period extends from Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) through Recent Songs (1979), the second roughly from Various Positions (1984) to Ten New Songs (2001). The he-doesn’t-really-sing complaint applies, if anywhere, to Dear Heather (2004) and Old Ideas (2012), and we should both forgive him this and dismiss the suggestion that such criticism applies in a similar way to his earlier work. The transition is gradual, but the difference is huge. The early voice has more range and urgency, the later greater richness, resonance, a gravitas won not from experience or cigarettes alone. Despite such changes, Cohen’s voice admittedly has retained a slightly nasal tone and remained of narrowish range. It’s not a generic voice, by any stretch, not generically beautiful either—it’s way too distinctive for that.

  Cohen’s Weight Class

  Valid criticisms of Cohen’s voice include its limited range and unconventionality, though more from a pop music than folk perspective. He’s no Sinatra or Callas, to be sure, but it would be woefully unfair to set the bar that high. Good does not imply keeping pace with the great. It also would be unfair of us to judge Frank Sinatra by the standards of opera, or Maria Callas by those of jazz or pop music. Each is a great singer in their own domain or “weight class,” and so too, I suggest, should we judge Leonard Cohen. In evaluating Cohen’s voice, we should consider his weight class, which straddles the divide between folk and popular music. With one foot in each genre, Cohen weighs in—as we knew he would—as a singer-songwriter (for slightly different emphasis, songwriter-singer). Just as we “forgive” Sinatra for not writing songs, or Cole Porter for not being a singer, so too should we “forgive” singer-songwriters for lacking Sinatra’s voice or Porter’s writing chops. Being good enough at both is pretty impressive.

  Perhaps, then, the question “Is Leonard Cohen a good singer?” isn’t quite right. Maybe the better question, apropos of his Juno Award, would be “Is Cohen a good vocalist?” or, even better, vocal stylist. One strong influence on Cohen’s musical style is often acknowledged to be the French chanson as exemplified by such artists Jacques Brel, where, as David Boucher observes in Dylan and Cohen, “the aesthetic sound of the voice determines the excellence of the work; for the chansonnier, it is style that matters and not perfect pitch or polished performance” (p. 137). Now the idea isn’t that Cohen isn’t a bad singer because he’s not really trying to be a good one. Rather, knocking his voice for being in a particular musical style or tradition will count less as criticism of Cohen himself and more as a complaint, whether just or prejudicial, about the entire tradition. Still, pigeonholing Cohen as a chansonnier seems to sell both him and his voice short. Cohen’s distinctive, personal vocal style inherits from yet transcends folk, blues, country, pop—various traditions.

  No discussion of Cohen’s weight class would be complete without ranking him vocally relative to other singer-songwriters. We should note (along with David Hume) that this isn’t mere opining, either, as such ranking can be an entirely objective matter where any dissent wouldn’t be taken too seriously (pp. 40–41), as in the case of someone’s hyperfandom moving them to proclaim [insert current action movie star] a better actor than Laurence Olivier. Among other singer-songwriters, it seems fair to see Cohen somewhere in the middle of the vocal quality spectrum, ranking below a Paul Simon but above a Bob Dylan; for a Canadian trifecta, let’s substitute Gordon Lightfoot above and Neil Young below. Remember that as singer-songwriters, those tending toward the bottom of the vocal spectrum still have mediocre voices, which by implication means those like Cohen above are in the better-than-mediocre category: in other words, good.

  Consider now what I’d like to call the great singer-songwriter argument, which goes something like this. Because being a singer-songwriter depends on two very different skill sets, such status implies a basic level of competence in both domains. In other words, you can’t even be a singer-songwriter without being dually capable of writing songs as well as singing them. By extension, how highly one rates as a singer-songwriter has implications for singing and songwriting ability. An excellent singer might be a lousy singer-songwriter, but just as a great hunter-gatherer has to be a pretty good hunter and a pretty good gatherer—though not necessarily supreme in either—so too must a great singer-songwriter be, at the very least, a pretty good singer, even if, as with Cohen, the songwriting appears superior to the singing and allows us to forgive imperfections in the latter. In a nutshell, then, the argument is that because Cohen is a great singer-songwriter, he also, by implication, counts as at least a decent singer. Although Bob Dylan is unquestionably a great songwriter, one could argue, by contrast, that his voice limits his singer-songwriter rank to something short of great, the upper echelons of good.

  Style Prejudice

  When we consider the role of experts in guiding our aesthetic choices, we naturally think of popular types of criticism: movie critics, food critics, literary critics, music critics. Although today’s internet culture fosters what we may kindly call “democratic” approaches to criticism, where everyone’s keen to assert their own taste alone, and it’s always open season on anyone and anything, most of us still incline toward respect for certain expert critics. Good critics are able to discern, better than others, the qualities that make art—whether we’re talking about a film, a singer, what have you—good, or worthy of attention. Being in a position to make those aesthetic judgments requires perceiving and responding to the relevant features of a variety of different examples, and doing so impartially (or, as David Hume put it, having a “strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice,” p. 44).

  That we should be “cleared of all prejudice” is something we should remind about 95 percent of all internet commentators. We sometimes associate such critical harshness, whether we find it on the internet or elsewhere, with justified opinion if not expertise. But such harshness can often conceal underlying prejudice. Take the following pre-internet pronouncement from critic Juan Rodriguez: “Although Cohen may have a private affinity for the vitality, ease and emotive qualities of pop music at its best . . . this does not automatically provide him with the talent to sing. Cohen plainly cannot sing. His voice is dull and monotonous and has little range” (p. 67). This reads like the sentence of a pretty uncompromising judge, who would be similarly tough assessing others and whose apparently principled stance commands our respect. However, the critic’s evaluation unfolds rather surprisingly: “Bob Dylan, on the other hand, does know how to sing and he makes his own rough and unsweet voice an attribute, not a liability. Unfortunately, Cohen has been able to do nothing with his voice and this fact turns up in his melodies, which are slow, deadeningly similar, and wholly uninspiring.” Ouch; the sting of it isn’t the point, though. Rather, with this unexpected turn the critic has lost, maybe not all, but most of us. Whatever we might think of the relative merits of the two voices, they’re not that different in terms of aesthetic judgment, not night-and-day different.

  This passage also illustrates a significant and usually unacknowledged source of many negative impressions of Cohen as a singer: style prejudice. A lot of people simply don’t like his style, any part of it, the way Cohen dresses, his poet-polished lyrics, his aesthetic sensibility, the ironic tone and dark, existential mood of many of his songs. Notice how the critic above linked what he dislikes about Cohen’s voice with his dislike of the music itself, suggesting that melodic “disappointment” somehow reveals vocal inadequacy. Some don’t like the romanticism, others the realism, others still the combination. To gloss any of these dislikes as “vocal inadequacy” is simply what philosophers call a category-mistake: a mis-attribution error. People who dismiss his singing are sometimes no more forgiving o
f more generically approved singers’ covers (as with Jennifer Warnes’s Famous Blue Raincoat tribute album), which indicates the issue isn’t really Cohen’s singing so much as the songs themselves. Preferring a cover to a Cohen original might also, but also might not, betray a style prejudice.

  A similar style and content prejudice can be seen in attitudes toward the music of Tom Waits, whose voice is also unconventional and whose songs, next to Cohen’s, are comparably nostalgic, gloomy, and depressing. There’s nothing wrong with preferring, as I confess I do, the more conventional, smoother voice of Waits’s early The Heart of Saturday Night (1974) to the roughed up vocals of his more experimental later work, but to transmute this preference into a negative verdict is again simply a style prejudice. Similarly, many who dismiss the folk baritone of the early Cohen probably haven’t given his later pop bass a real chance, and those who deny that Cohen sings at all likely haven’t really considered such early performances as “Stories of the Street” or “Sing Another Song, Boys.”

  The Je Ne Sais Quoi

  Although some take to Cohen’s voice right away and others never do, still others come around after repeated or prolonged exposure. For some, in other words, Leonard Cohen is an acquired taste. To this extent, the pleasures of listening to Cohen are not unlike those derived from some alcoholic beverages, certain foods, and smoking, which typically require overcoming an initial negative reaction. Most people find their first exposure to the taste of beer, the texture of sushi, and inhaling smoke to be somewhere on the continuum between rather offputting and outright revolting. I suspect that Cohen himself would not find the comparisons insulting. Some people never get over their initial negative reactions, and that’s fine. But the fans and critics who have managed to cross over, or who haven’t had to, are able to enjoy whole spheres of experience, of pleasure, to which the rest of the world remains closed. To transpose a local beer ad into Cohen fandom terms, those who like him like him a lot.

  To appreciate the importance of this point, that for many Cohen is an acquired taste, we should remind ourselves that, for Hume, part of being a good critic is sensitively discerning the relevant qualities, the aesthetic character, of the thing being judged. To the extent that Cohen is an acquired taste, his detractors might never be in a position to perceive the qualities that many fans and music critics enjoy. It’s not that they dislike what the likers like, but rather that they’ve not managed to overcome their natural resistance to even experiencing, much less considering, what fans appreciate. As connoisseurs of beer or wine are able to discern qualities that dislikers simply can’t, so too might the same be said for true Leonard Cohen aficionados.

  What fans and many critics experience in Cohen, to the extent that this can be described at all, is a distinctive voice singing unique songs with genuinely poetic lyrics and that express a significant artistic vision. The distinctiveness of the singing matches the personal quality of the lyrics, which unlike almost all other folk or pop songs do more than gesture at poetry. Cohen’s lyrics don’t just gesture, they achieve, they are. Most generic voices are less distinctive and less distinct in expressing lyrics that seldom merit the emphasis of Cohenesque enunciation. Where some listeners might resent that Cohen’s singing style betrays such an extraordinarily exacting concern with language, a loving exactitude, this care is part of what fans appreciate in his voice along with the sense of intimacy it suggests and explores with the listener. It’s a voice rich with the attempt to share with the listener something both important and well-turned. Cohen’s voice suits its poetic material.

  As many critics, not just fans, see it, Cohen’s voice has a mysterious, enigmatic quality, an undeniable je ne sais quoi. Critics observe in the DVD Leonard Cohen: Under Review that his voice has an “immense personal charm. You want to engage him when you hear his voice coming out of the speakers” (Robert Christgau). “It has a very hypnotic quality” (Anthony DeCurtis). But figuring out exactly why isn’t so easy: “Is it the quality of his voice? Is it the way he dramatizes himself? I think that these things are very mysterious” (Christgau). Part of the answer might be found in a thought-provoking comment by Ronee Blakley, who also sang backup on Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977):

  Leonard has in his voice a slight trembling from time to time which is extremely vulnerable and real and present and there. It’s at the front of his head, though it almost has a rumbling sound, a biblical sound at times. It can also sound very sensitive and charming and this sound that he has in addition to the rabbinical quality . . . is almost what in Christian music would be called bel canto or cantus firmus: the kind that monks would sing. . . .

  This comment suggests to my mind two very provocative things about Cohen’s voice: first, that it succeeds in part by somehow tapping into our musical subconscious; and second, that it works not necessarily despite but also oddly because of its particular imperfections. A better voice just wouldn’t be Leonard Cohen’s. Would it make sense to wish him better endowed? I really don’t think so. It seems we’d be missing the point.

  No Accounting?

  As I write this I glance at a ticket stub propped up against my laptop: Section 37, Row J, Seat 2, not just a ticket, my ticket, for the Leonard Cohen concert at the Halifax Metro Centre, April 13, 2013. It reads “On stage promptly at 8 pm,” which he was, and he played for three and a quarter hours. It was the second time I’d seen him live, the first also in Halifax in 2008 at a venue—and so he recalled in the 2013 concert—called the Cohn auditorium. Though I’d been a fan for very many years, I never thought I’d be fortunate enough to get to see him live, much less twice. The aura hasn’t faded yet. But it gives me pause, this highly personal experience, shared with Megan (Seat 1) and thousands of others: communication as communion. It was, and remains, perhaps a perfect example of how art can—somehow, seemingly—personalize the universal, universalize the personal. Can I convey what it meant to me? Not exactly, though I can gesture at it. Could I convince someone who didn’t like it that they should have? Probably not. “It’s good but I don’t like it” is no paradox. Good standards limit judgment without compelling taste.

  This might remind you of the old chestnut, “There’s no accounting for taste,” a sensible but still ambiguous adage. It might mean that you can’t explain why someone has the particular likes or dislikes they do, or that there’s ultimately no justification for taste “beyond itself”—as the bromide goes, it is what it is. Hume, on the other hand, thought that there is accounting for taste, in terms of human nature, which he saw as uniform. That uniformity explains why there can be lasting consensus on great artists like Homer (p. 42). When there are aesthetic disputes, Hume thought, that’s because some of the disputants lack true expertise, missing the right sensitivities or being subject to forgivable age- or culture-specific tendencies. In some cases, too, there will be unavoidable idiosyncrasies of personal taste that don’t really touch on aesthetic disputes. Suppose, for instance, when it comes to Cohen, I prefer his realism, you his romanticism, though we agree that he’s a great artist.

  Can we confidently say that Hume-approved experts will agree that Leonard Cohen is a good singer? Not necessarily, though I’ve given some reason to suppose they may. It’s actually pretty tough to figure out who, if anyone, the Hume-approved critics are. Given how vehement the disputes among critics, all of whom have some claim to objectivity, often get, and how rare consensus among them really is except in—fittingly—exceptional cases, perhaps human nature and aesthetic judgment aren’t uniform but varied, pluralistic. Good critics then would be seen in terms of sub-universal but legit spheres of appropriate influence. But does this not just dissolve into utter subjectivity, an aesthetic of idiosyncrasy? Perhaps my enjoyment of Leonard Cohen’s singing voice is mere preference after all.

  Is that all there is? Maybe, and I’ll tell you why. In my late teens I was depressive to the point of suicidal. My parents were naturally concerned, more so as the usual ways of addressing the problem proved ineffective.
The depression and I were stubborn, lonely and painful as it got. My father did something totally counterintuitive but ultimately inspired: he bought me The Best of Leonard Cohen (1975) on cassette. Who would think to give their suicidal son “music to slit your wrists to”? And yet, as I listened, I resonated with the music, with Cohen’s voice, all of it, with such immediacy, such intensity, it was so resolutive—it saved my life. How could that not cloud, in the best possible way, my judgment, biasing me toward the one voice that reached me through the darkness?

  6

  Covering Cohen

  ADAM AUCH

  In the third verse of “Tower of Song,” Leonard Cohen makes a joke at his own expense. In singing that he was “born with the gift of a golden voice,” he makes a statement so clearly false that listeners are forced to understand it ironically. We know that Cohen doesn’t have a beautiful singing voice, and here Cohen shows he knows it too. Appearing as it does in the midst of a song in which he reflects on his career in the music business, the line comes across as yet another example of Cohen’s characteristic humor and humility.

  Something interesting happens, however, when the song is covered by other singers, particularly when these singers have (or had) voices that could be plausibly considered “golden.” Instead of a self-deprecating joke, the line takes on other meanings. For example, consider Marianne Faithfull’s version of the song from 1999’s Vagabond Ways. Unlike Cohen, Faithfull did once possess what I suspect many people would consider a beautiful singing voice. However, following years of drug and alcohol abuse, her voice hardened and coarsened considerably. As she sings it, the line comes across as a kind of lament—a reminder that something valuable has been irretrievably lost.