Idolator: leonard cohen

Leonard Cohen is Metaphorically Tied to a Chair

Mike Barthel — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Surely I can't have been the only person a little disappointed that the song chosen to pay tribute to Leonard Cohen when inducting him into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was "Hallelujah." It's a great song, certainly, but it's most strongly associated with Jeff Buckley, to such a degree that some people don't even know Cohen wrote it. Worse, the version performed by Damien Rice is the Buckley version, with its ascending melody line in the final chorus and persistent falsetto. It'd be like playing a rock version of "All Along the Watchtower" at Bob Dylan's induction—a fine song, but not really the best choice. So what would've been better, and who should've sung it? Well, just pick any two of the following:

Bird on a Wire / Hercules and Love Affair

Dance Me to the End of Love / My Chemical Romance

So Long, Marianne / The Arcade Fire

Take This Waltz / Battles

The Future / Feist

Famous Blue Raincoat / Slayer

Chelsea Hotel #2 / Kanye West

Tower of Song / Sonic Youth

First We Take Manhattan / LCD Soundsystem

Jazz Police / Kelly Clarkson

Can it be coincidence that the now Wenner-approved ...

Jess Harvell — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Can it be coincidence that the now Wenner-approved Leonard Cohen is embarking on his first trans Euro-Canadia tour in 15 years just days after "Hallelujah" suddenly found its way onto a billion high school iPods and just days after I was compelled by unseen forces to watch the entirety of Oliver Stone trainwreck Natural Born Killers (which utilizes Len's sunny bombtrack "The Future" alongside the hot alt hits of 1993) on Cinemax? Doubtful! [Rolling Stone]

As of this moment, Jeff Buckley's cover of ...

Maura Johnston — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:00:47 EST

As of this moment, Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"—which Jason Castro performed last night to much fanfare and Googling—is No. 5 on the iTunes Music Store's Top Songs chart and Nos. 2 and 7 on the Amazon MP3 store's singles chart; Cohen's version is also at No. 98 on Amazon. (If the iTunes Store actually charted the digital tracks they're selling from each contestant, instead of hiding behind a cloak of Fox-sanctioned secrecy, I have no doubt that Castro would be the runaway No. 1 the minute that the contestant's performances went on sale Friday.) Am I a bad person for being kinda happy that Phil Collins' "Another Day In Paradise," which David Archuleta pounded his way through, hasn't seen a similar bump? [Amazon / iTunes]

Jason Castro Drags Leonard Cohen Into The "American Idol" Spotlight

Maura Johnston — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:01:57 EST

American Idol hopeful Jason Castro performed his take on the Jeff Buckley interpretation of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" that won huzzahs from the judges tonight, thus continuing the long, strange journey of Cohen's song from hyperserious-to-an-almost-satirical-point track to something that everyone, even Simon Cowell, can be moved by. Frequent Idolator guestblogger Mike Barthel wrote a paper on the trajectory of the song—complete with graph!—for last year's EMP Pop Music Conference, and it's pretty key reading for anyone who wants to know more about this track that, judging by our Google hits over the past 30 minutes, has been "hidden in plain sight" since its first release some 20-or-so years ago. [clapclap.org]

Just in time for the announcement that Leonard ...

Maura Johnston — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:30:40 EST

Just in time for the announcement that Leonard Cohen will be embarking on his first tour since 1993, Popdose gives a critical appraisal to his Natural Born Killers-closing track "The Future." [Popdose]

Leonard Cohen and His Fellow Slowpoke Songwriters

mmatos — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:45:35 EDT

Leonard Cohen is on the cover of the current issue of The Word, and inside he discusses songwriting:

Cohen: When young songwriters ask me if I have any advice, this is the only advice I give them. It is: if you stick with a song long enough it will yield. But long enough is way beyond any reasonable duration. It's not a week or two. It's not a month or two. It's not necessarily a year or two. If a song is to yield, you may have to stay with it for years and years.

Interviewer: That's fascinating. What's the longest gestation period for one of your songs?

Cohen: "Hallelujah" was at least five years. I have about 80 verses for it.

Even non-songwriters can feel Cohen on this point—this post alone took at least six months to cook up. But there are endless numbers of songs that took at least as long to gestate. For example:

A Tribe Called Quest, "Description of a Fool" It took Q-Tip ten weeks to find a fool to describe, and approximately 26 more months to come up with an actual description of him.

Paul Simon, "The Boy in the Bubble" Simon is on record as having taken three months to write this song, but what he conveniently leaves out is the amount of time it took to have the bubble constructed and then find the right boy to observe in it for those three months. Total time elapsed: two years on the nose.

Alice Cooper, "School's Out" Took them 224 days to come up with "We can't even think of a word that rhymes."

The Rivingtons, "Papa Oom Mow Mow" Fifteen solid months of going to an office every day, sitting around a table with acoustic guitars, yellow notebooks, and music sheets, and struggling, straining, banging heads against tables, shouting matches, several near-breakups, one songwriter sleeping with another's wife, a suicide attempt, copious blow, an unreasonable tab at the tavern near the office (paid for by the Rivingtons' manager, who later sued), an immigration scare, and an unfortunate incident with a rogue paperweight led Carl White, Al Frazier, Sonny Harris, and Turner Wilson Jr. to pen this masterpiece. The studio sessions were as epic as the writing, with Harris constructing a tile box to record his vocals in while White began talking to the studio console in Lingala. He was later institutionalized, recording a cracked solo acoustic album titled Frog with production help from his former bandmates; it became a cult classic and inspired a tribute album on the C/Z label in 1994.

The Beatles, "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" Three years, seven months. Don't ask.