Leonard Cohen
Hear Norah Jones Cover ‘Steer Your Way’ From Final Leonard Cohen Album
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 age 82. [embedded content][embedded content] “I loved singing this song because it’s a newer one but has all the best qualities of some of his older classic songs,” says Jones, who has recorded for Blue Note since her 2002 debut album Come Away With Me. After celebrating the 20th anniversary of that project with shows this year, Jones will begin a short tour of Japan Oct. 11 in Sapporo. As previously reported, Here It Is was produced by longtime Cohen friend Larry Klein, who rounded up “a gr...
Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel Lead New Leonard Cohen Tribute Album
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 “Coming Back to You,” originally found on Cohen’s 1984 album Various Positions. “Leonard Cohen had been a friend since 1982 or so, and in the last 15 years of his life, he became a close friend,” Klein says. “He was possibly the wisest and funniest friend that I had, and someone that I enjoyed, immensely, in every way. After he passed away, I found myself frequently covering his songs with other artists that I was working with. One reason, of course, is that the songs are so ...
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
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 ship can sail, baby, sail. And sometimes, breakups pierce the heart and wound the spirit forevermore. This is the stuff of poets and songwriters — the “see ya” and “ciao” and “so long” to lost amours. or maybe the ones you didn’t appreciate until they walked out that door. Now you’re sorry. So classic. Breakup songs have always been about the important things like love won, then love gone. Sometimes breakups are wistful and sometimes they’re full-on insane, and on some occasi...
Martin Rehof of Communions Pays Tribute to Leonard Cohen
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 Leonard Cohen enters through a different route, which is, first and foremost, lyrical. But it wasn’t until I began writing our upcoming record Pure FabricationthatI really allowed myself to embrace Cohen as an influence; that is, I allowed his influence to directly seep into my own writing. Cohen’s poetic approach to music has always cast its shadow over my musical consciousness, but had previously been latent in my expression. I think that’s becau...
Tamala Poljak of Infinite X’s and Longstocking Remembers Leonard Cohen
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 Cohen’s song, “Suzanne”. The song was sandwiched between a deafening rendition of “Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave and a 13th Floor Elevators song. “Suzanne” struck me as nothing short of lyrical perfection; the words and melody remained on repeat in my messy head for hours. It haunted me like the first time I heard Gregorian chants and read James Baldwin. Within a week of hearing Jason’s version of Suzanne, I owned four Leonard Cohen albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs of Love and Hate (...
The 10 Best Indie and Alternative Leonard Cohen Covers
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 humor, and frank sexuality. Though classic rock icons like Billy Joel and James Taylor have covered him, and Pentatonix has moronically attempted to make “Hallelujah” into a Christmas standard, Leonard Cohen’s legacy has grown more when he’s been covered by artists who share Cohen’s subversive edge or name-checked in songs like Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea.” November 7 marks the 5th anniversary of the Canadian legend’s death in 2016, so here’s a look back at 10 of the b...
The 13 Best Make-Out Songs
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 mind-blowing embrace. Perchance you remember making out on the disco floor when the wild tsunami rush of sensuality and freedom hit you, lights strobed and “J’taime” raced your heartbeat as Jane Birkin breathily simulated pleasure to Serge’s song written in homage to his affair with Brigitte Bardot. They had their song. We have “our” song — the one that’s seared into memory and flesh. Or the song you’ll play tonight when the mood lights dim. In homage to these classic make-out tunes, one must me...
First Aid Kit Announce Who By Fire, Live Leonard Cohen Tribute Album
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 first single is Cohen’s hit “Suzanne,” which came out in 1967 and has become one of the most-covered songs in Cohen’s catalog. Following Cohen’s November 2016 death, First Aid Kit shared: “… If you ever put a guitar in our hands and ask us to sing, we will always play ‘Suzanne.’ When we heard it for the first time we were transfixed.” About Who By Fire, the duo said in a statement: “We recently listened back to this concert and realized that this was something out ...
The 10 Best Leonard Cohen Songs
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 and truth. When asked about his baritone, he was the first to say, “I never thought I could sing.” But sing he did. He sang his heart out. From his first 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen to his elegiac 14th studio and final album You Want it Darker in 2016, he sang about relationships, reflected on life, death, love, impermanence, and Biblical themes. Cohen’s life trajectory is well known to fans. He began his career as a poet and novelist in Mont...
Love and the Muse
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 Love. The film is a jagged sort of love story about Leonard and his Norwegian muse. Because Broomfield was Marianne Ihlen’s lifelong friend (and he adds, her lover on Hydra) the documentary is a magical memory tour that includes personal archival film, photos, and voiceovers of Marianne, Leonard, and the director too. Like a Harold Pinter play that begins at the end of the story and moves backwards in time, Marianne and Leonard transits from Marianne’s ...
Aimee Mann Shares Cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’
Aimee Mann’s captivating cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche,” which serves as the theme song for HBO’s true-crime docu-series I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, is now available for download and/or streaming. It’s an especially poignant song placement for Mann, as she was close friends with the late Michelle McNamara, whose tireless research and book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, helped inspire the series — and catch the criminal McNamara coined the Golden State Killer. “My husband, Michael Penn, and I had been close friends with Patton [Oswalt] and Michelle for many years and were very familiar with the ups and downs of her research,” the Academy Award-nominated and Grammy Award-winning artist said in a rele...
Perfume Genius Shares Organ-Infused Cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Bird on the Wire’
On Tuesday (Sept. 9) indie pop star Mike Hadreas — known by his stage name Perfume Genius — hopped on Los Angeles radio station KCRW to perform some new tunes. He did cuts off 2020’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately album, including “On the Floor” and “Jason.” But Hadreas also dropped a real gem: a cover of music icon Leonard Cohen’s 1968 track “Bird on the Wire.” The cover hears Perfume Genius mirror Cohen’s somber tone throughout, with some heavy organ playing carrying it to the end. In short, it feels like a real trip to church, or at the very least, it might inspire some type of religious experience. “If I could play this cover anywhere, I think I’d want to play in a big church with a big pipe organ, or if we could somehow get the pipe organ into like a deep dark cave,” ...
- 1
- 2
