Leonard Cohen was not a household name, but many of his songs will endure in the popular imagination. The French-Canadian singer-songwriter, who died Thursday at 82, wrote such familiar pop hymns as "Suzanne" and Hallelujah."
His sepulchral monotone was instantly recognizable to music fans drawn to his spare guitar playing and dark lyrics that examined everything from death, disillusionment, addictive love, God, saints, devils and everything in between. Cohen was never the "I wanna hold your hand" type.
Before he became an unlikely pop star, Leonard Cohen was a well-known poet with several books and major Canadian literary awards to his name. He split his time between Greece and his native Montreal. Despite his success as a poet, he was drawn to American music and left Canada for Nashville and Los Angeles once he had enough songs in hand. Like all aspiring folk artists, he eventually found himself in New York's Greenwich Village.
For many rock aficionados, Leonard Cohen's only lyric-writing rival is Nobel laureate Bob Dylan, who became a friend. Where Dylan dashes off lyrics in a frenzy, Cohen took a methodical approach, laboring over lyrics for years.
Cohen's fan base stretched across generations and genres. His fellow musicians from U2 and Elton John to Herbie Hancock and REM adored his dark poetics as much as his millions of fans did. He taught us all to appreciate that even though there's "a crack in everything," it also lets the light in.
This editorial appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.