Norah Jones‘ cover of Leonard Cohen‘s “Steer Your Way” is the latest track to emerge from the upcoming tribute album Here It Is, which will be released Oct. 14 by Blue Note. “Steer Your Way” was originally issued on Cohen’s album You Want It Darker, released 17 days before the artist’s death in 2016 at […]
Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, James Taylor, Norah Jones, Sarah McLachlan and Mavis Staples are among the heavy hitters appearing on the new Leonard Cohen tribute album Here It Is, which will arrive Oct. 14 from Blue Note. The 12-track project was produced by longtime Cohen friend Larry Klein and is led by Taylor’s cover of […]
Sometimes you’re the windshield; sometimes you’re the bug. This bit of philosophical wisdom was imparted to me long ago by a guy whose name I don’t remember, nor can I recall the breakup. I suspect that in this case, I was the windshield. Indeed, sometimes a romantic breakup feels like ballast thrown overboard so your […]
Leonard Cohen has been a huge inspiration for me as a songwriter. But in a different way than most other artists or bands, which one might otherwise regard as obvious direct musical “influences” on my band Communions. Although our music isn’t rooted in folk—post-punk, Britpop and alt-rock are perhaps our biggest genre influences—the influence of […]
The first time I heard a Leonard Cohen song was through the surrogate voice of a dear friend, Jason P. Grisell, in Venice, CA circa 1991. Sitting on the sidewalk hunched over his beat-up acoustic guitar wearing an army green parka in the middle of a hot summer day, Jason sang an unforgettable version of […]
Leonard Cohen is the definition of a songwriter’s songwriter, the kind of artist you’d seldom hear on the radio, but was revered by countless musicians as one of the greatest lyricists in the world. An accomplished poet and novelist before he ever recorded an album, Cohen’s songs were vivid and literary, full of politics, dark […]
Making out is timeless — kisses rev up the romantic mood and stir the spirit, if not the loins. Make-out songs contain multitudes too, like the one playing when you sync with that special someone, or the tune that nano-second sucks you right back to high school when you held your teenage crush in a […]
First Aid Kit is back with a live tribute album for Leonard Cohen titled Who By Fire, arriving March 26. It captures their performances at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm in March of 2017 in 20 tracks. According to the press release, it’s a “theatrical staging of Leonard Cohen’s songs, poems, and letters.” The […]
To paraphrase a saying attributed to Buddha, when the student is ready, the Leonard Cohen song will appear. Philosopher king and ladies’ man, poet and ordained Buddhist monk, aesthete and pilgrim — in his nearly 50-year musical career, Cohen embodied contradictions and sang his story-songs in a trademark sandpapery voice in the pursuit of beauty […]
Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love, 2019, 1 hour 42 minutes.Directed by Nick Broomfield. “Dearest Marianne,” Leonard Cohen writes to Marianne as she’s dying in a hospital bed, “I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand.” And so begins the elegiac and hauntingly beautiful 2019 documentary, Marianne and Leonard: Words of […]