Musical Tribute: Leonard Cohen

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Leonard Cohen is a singer songwriter from Canada who launched his career in 1967 with his debut album “Songs of Leonard Cohen.” The album included classics like “Suzanne,” “So Long, Marianne,” and “The Stranger Song.” In 1977, he released his album “Death of a Ladies’ Man,” which was co-wrote by Phil Spector.  During the 1960s and 1970s, Cohen focused on creating some of the finest acoustic folk compositions in the genre, emplacing melody and mellow tempos. In the 1980s, Cohen would reinvent himself and his craft, setting aside his remarkable acoustic center compositions for modern sounds. Beginning with “Various Positions,” he began to introduce elements of soft rock into his music. The said album would introduce the world to his most famous song “Hallelujah,” a song that has been covered by myriad of different recording artist. His next album “I’m Your Man,” which was released in 1988, would lean to his final transformation into a new form or folk singer-songwriter that replaced acoustics with synthesizers and drum machines. This album would offer classics like “First We Take Manhattan,” “I’m Your Man,” and the often covered “Everybody Knows.”

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Cohen was born and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in the outer Montreal, Quebec area. He grew up reading the poetry of Federico García Lorca and study classical guitar. Before starting his career as a musician, he spent most of the 1960s writing novels and poetry. He published a two book of poems titled “Flowers for Hitler” and Parasites of Heaven” along with several novels, including “The Favourite Game”  and “Beautiful Losers.” The latter book garner controversy for Cohen because of many sexual explicit passages. Eventually, Cohen would find his way in music and draw out a legacy of songwriting composition and performance that create signature identity in popular music.

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Cohen passed away the beginning of November 2016 in his home in Los Angeles. He was 82 years old and left a legacy that will carry on him memory for centuries to come.

Listen to Leonard Cohen on Spotify

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