L. Cohen or P. Simon, who is the better songwriter

Simon

why these two?

is this some kind of parody poll?

Simon by 1000
Don't get me started on Lennie

voted personal preference and you can't stop me

well Leonard Cohen was a well regarded and established poet before he even started his music career.

on the other hand he has never been on SNL.

on the other other hand being on SNL requires no talent whatsoever.

Cohen had more hair. So Cohen.

Talent is a p mushy concept. Simon waaaay ahead in the quantity and variety of good to great songs.

Talent is a p mushy concept. Simon waaaay ahead in the quantity and variety of good to great songs.

it's a testament to his talent that Death of a Ladies Man is an unfinished work with rough vocals yet still a thing of beauty and wonder

he was too funny for SNL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv4J7sID3Pk

Shaker 2times otm

it's almost apples to oranges. "Kodachrome" is a good/great song in one way, but next to something like "The Master" or "Sisters of Mercy" it's just some alright pop, almost seems unfair

"Mrs. Robinson" is a classic song and def a great all time track. but next to "Suzanne"? you got to be kidding me.

There's probably an argument for Simon being the better songwriter but I'm sure he'd personally admit to quaking in the presence of Lennie's sublimity.

I doubt it. Simon is a p confident guy

This is Simon pretty easy for me. I may give Cohen the edge lyrically but Simon was a genius tunesmith

I don't really like Paul Simon at all & will never voluntarily listen to his music but if the metric is "songwriter" he still wins this. Cohen is a better lyricist but an reasonable metric.

check out the ILX Best Albums of 2k10 thread, Leonard Cohen is all over it, at 82+ years old. Simon hasn't even released an album since 2001.

the fuck are you on about, simon released an album in 2016

good one, too

but I'm still not sure why we're comparing these very different but in no obvious way opposed artists?

I dont vote in decades/annual polls but yeah simon absolutely released great stuff in the last decade

Cohen goes deeper but Simon covers more surface area

talk about covers, there must be a million Cohen covers out there and a handful of Simon ones

the guy wrote Hallelujah!

Much bigger Paul Simon fan (for S&G plus first solo album).

"voted personal preference and you can't stop me"--wouldn't know how to vote any other way.

I saw Paul Simon live a couple of weeks ago. Great concert. Did a couple of tracks with a sextet, including a version of René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War that was spellbindingly beautiful.

I'm also pretty sure Bridge Over Troubled Water has been covered a couple of times, lol.

Leonard Cohen is a better poet than he is songwriter.

Love 'em both, love Paul more, voted Paul, also think that he's more a songwriter on all fronts while Lenny's primary power is poetry.

are you asking which one lives higher...

in the tower of song?

What calstars said

Going for Simon

Leonard Cohen is a better poet than he is songwriter.

God, no.

who had more songs on the soundtrack to shrek?

checkmate paul simon u tiny bitch

talk about covers, there must be a million Cohen covers out there and a handful of Simon ones

Probably more than a handful but, yes, for a guy who is a Poet Not A Songwriter Cohen must have written some of the most covered songs of his generation: Suzanne, Bird on a Wire, Hallelujah...

surely "hell, i can sing it better than that" is even more of a factor for Len than Paul

I don't know about talent, but Cohen is better.

man now i'm sad there was never a cohen and garfunkel

Awesome cover and Simon tears up (much like emmylou did when they dedicated a song to her)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pa3xOakbGTo

Voted Cohen, all you haterz can go fly a kite.

I was lucky enough to see him perform 6 years ago. He played a 3 hour set, not a dud in sight.

We had a lot of fun
We had a lot of money
We had a little son and we thought we'd call him Sonny
Sonny gets married and moves away
Sonny has a baby and bills to pay
Sonny gets sunnier
Day by day by day by day

talk about covers, there must be a million Cohen covers out there and a handful of Simon ones

possibly because there's more room to improve on the original performances

now, who is the better cook?

Keats vs. Wordsworth

Paul Simon, obviously.

simon's last album was hella cool

xp - Yes this poll is a little ridiculous I guess. Cohen seems more revered around here but that probably has a lot to do with his being more active this century and then his passing

Cohen’s adherents tend to be particularly... spirited, in my experience

don't make me post that amanda palmer video

I remain blissfully ignorant

two different types, hard to compare, but i prefer Lenny C

possibly because there's more room to improve on the original performances

Kinda like Bob Dylan then.

The fact is cohen is like last among the canonical big singer-songwriters to come out in Dylan’s wake and go huge in the 70s - neil, paul, lou reed - they’re all ahead of him imo.

He never 'went huge' in the 70s. I don't really think Paul Simon is the same thing at all as those others listen, or Dylan - even if that's where he started.

listed not listen

Dylan, Cohen, Neil Young, Lou Reed - their songs are generally pretty simple to play and sing.

Neil paul bob and leonard all came out of the coffee shop folkie milieu ifvthe early 60s, which is really the only common link. Lou is bit of a different beast but even he had a bit of that in him as is evident from VU outtakes and demos.

Leonard wouldve loved to he huge in the 70s if he’d been able to figure out how lol

xp

Be huge

leonard is a superior lyricist, but not as superior as paul is a melodist.

Because of this thread I found out that Simon has a new album coming out in septembe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Blue_Light It includes rerecorded versions of some of his more obscure songs. He did a couple on the tour, and they were great. My response literally was that I wanted a whole album of that. So yay :)

Strikes me that if Simon were a worse melody writer, or a singer more in the style of Dylan or Cohen then his lyrics would be better thought of. He's been *too fucking good* a songwriter to get the same kind of plaudits for being a poet like those 2, and others.

Either that or people don't like his songs or his records.

People don’t like his songs or records, which is why he’s one of the most popular songwriters of the 20th century

Maybe the sort of people likely to give out plaudits for being a poet might not like be the sort of people who like his songs and or his records? Crrrrrrritics?

It's pretty silly to say he's too good a songwriter to be recognized as a poet, isn't it? Leonard Cohen actually was a poet after all!

I can't think of much worse than a songwriter being called a poet anyway so Paul has done well to avoid the tag!

Cohen better at words, Simon better at tunes, voted Simon because tunes is better than words

voted Simon for that sweet ass

Lenny never blew that room away imho

lmao

only one of these men was a REAL songwriter

Either way Cohen and Dylan are both known as having a lyrical genius or huge gift that Simon doesn't have and i posit that much of it is because he wrote tuuuunes, so the lyrics get ignored half the time. Hardly the most original thought ever expressed about the man i'm sure but there it is.

the idea that Cohen and Dylan get covered more because "there's more room to improve on the original performances" doesn't make any sense to me

they get covered for the same reason Shakespeare's plays get played; partly because of canonization, partly because they wrote v strong material with room for interpretation

to suggest Cohen (or Dylan or Young or Lou or whichever songwriter) didn't write good melodies also completely misses the mark to me

I'm thinking Simon's style of writing doesn't lend itself as much to covers (apart from the early folky stuff)

anyway I still find this a troll poll

That Cohen doc Simon posted upthread is amazing.

See, even Paul Simon is a fan of Lennie.

"Proper" songwriting, yeah, right.

agree with the comment above that the excellence of Simon's songwriting obscures his quality as a poet. (even with sonny getting sunnier.)

half of whatever votes Simon gets should be distributed to Los Lobos

this thread is making me hate paul simon

I hear you.

voted Simon for that sweet ass

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Friday, July 20, 2018 7:08 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

respect

is the Capeman music good

Not really

i'm like an 80th percentile cohen fan and only like a 50th percentile simon fan but it's still simon by a long shot

Cohen for not breaking the boycott of playing South Africa

I've got mad love for the Capeman music myself, but it's probably his most 'love it or hate it' album. It's got latin and doo-wop influenced sounds with Rubén Blades and Marc Anthony singing. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, you probably shouldn't bother with it.

It was so appealing to me that I went to see the show during its original run but I still don’t like the music.

I love Capeman, “Born In Puerto Rico” is top shelf.

Voted Cohen btw

Lenny didn't need Garfunkel to become a star iirc

the posited distinction between "poet" and "songwriter" is stupid stuff I'd've thought we'd all outgrown, they are the same occupation but for different though sometimes intersecting audiences. but solve for "we all" obv, I think most of the world thinks a poet and a songwriter are two different things & I have my own baggage to account for here too (intended to become a poet i.e. writer of books of poetry, began setting my verse to song, ended up being a songwriter). I like Cohen's poetry (=songs) and don't much care for Simon's with a few exceptions; Simon's a superior melodist & is more curious sonically / stylistically than Cohen, though Cohen's songs in the care of others often reveal themselves to be better melodies than they appeared to any but the converted in their original iterations.

This is a Beatles-Stones question, so I'll just say Dylan.

This is a Beatles-Stones question, so I'll just say "klaatu, berata...."

Best to solve this with brackets.

"Celia" vs. "Chelsea Hotel No. 2"

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" vs. "If It Be Your Will"

"Duncan" vs. "The Stranger Song"

"Late in the Evening" vs. "Jazz Police'

"Celia" vs. "Chelsea Hotel No. 2"

Would be good to switch the lyrics and keep the music on either of these songs.

God plz no on brackets. For one thing, Simon was not the same writer decade to decade.

In interviews Simon tends to disavow (rightly, in my view) the early glurgy flowery poesy flower of stuff like "Dangling Conversation." He feels like his best lyric writing is on Graceland, Rhythm of the Saints, Hearts & Bones, and I tend to agree.

But then there will always be ilx0rz who are like: wat, no, Dangling Conversation is the shiznitt; mid- and late-career Simon is boomer navel-gazey wrongness.

ts: "Clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy" vs. "a cloud shifts, the plane lifts, she moves on."

I assume something like this is also true of Cohen, but I don't have much fluency with his periods of work. Seems like his lyrics and poetry have always been good to great. His sense of song and melody and arrangement has gone from simple and solid to deliberately repellent, and probably back again.

the posited distinction between "poet" and "songwriter" is stupid stuff I'd've thought we'd all outgrown

lol i just finished a book that devotes an entire chapter to this. it was stupid

I assume something like this is also true of Cohen

it is imo, stuff like "the stranger song" is so much more complicated than, say, "anthem." (though "closing time," on the same record as "anthem," is prob as complicated as "the stranger song," but it just seems so much more sure of itself)

In interviews Simon tends to disavow (rightly, in my view) the early glurgy flowery poesy flower of stuff like "Dangling Conversation." He feels like his best lyric writing is on Graceland, Rhythm of the Saints, Hearts & Bones, and I tend to agree.

simon and ymp otm

it is v hard for me to listen to simon and garfunkel lol

Montreal bagels over New York bagels.

POX Paul

1. I Know What I Know
2. The Only Living Boy In New York
3. The Obvious Child
4. Me And Julio
5. Mrs. Robinson
6. You Can Call Me Al
7. Kodachrome
8. The Cool, Cool River
9. The Boxer
10. Cecelia

POX Lenny

1. God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot (w/ Buffy)
2. Story Of Isaac
3. Hallelujah
4. You Want It Darker
5. Sisters Of Mercy
6. The Partisan (translation)
7. Tower Of Song
8. Joan Of Arc
9. Famous Blue Raincoat
10. Dress Rehearsal Rag

I would've spent my entire life with Leonard Cohen if he'd have let me, and I doubt I would last an hour with Paul Simon without wanting to fight him

And God Is Alive, Story Of Isaac and Hallelujah are probably my top three songs by either artist

But I have to vote Paul Simon, the quality of his songwriting just never flags, all the way down, and that's just his "songwriting"-- he consistently makes better records and is a far more compelling musician, singer and performer

Voted Cohen anyway just to be spiteful

Compare Cohen's version of "Tonight Will Be Fine" with Teddy Thompson's. For me, that comparison makes the point about how there's a good and listenable song lying beneath some Cohen compositions, and Cohen either couldn't or wouldn't record that song.

I will further concede that that's a separate issue from who is the better songwriter. But it does seem to be a consistent theme that for Cohen (and sometimes Dylan) they are not the ideal interpreter of their own work.

I've never understood that claim w/r/t Dylan... who feels that way, people who don't like his voice or something? His recordings are (justly) legendary.

who feels that way, people who don't like his voice or something

Exactly those people. Cool if you disagree with them, but it is madness to deny that it is an opinion that is out there in force.

I'd be at a loss to name a Dylan cover that was superior to his own version(s) tbh, though there are plenty of good ones.

xp I've heard that certain ppl hold that opinion; have never met one.

Also, Οὖτις otm.

i heard there was a secret chord

i think the arrangements on the later cohen records are just great so i'll be unmoved by all arguments that he's better sung by other people (not claiming there aren't astonishing, superior covers out there of cohen songs)

especially bc as cohen's voice hardened over time his performance became way more central to the songs (imo). i'm sure there's a great "in my secret life" cover out there; but for me that song is as much about his vocal as it is his lyrics

feel like i'm almost certainly stealing these ideas from someone else who participated in the cohen poll

There's a lot of Dylan songs I like, but always other people's renditions and never the originals. I don't own any Bob Dylan albums and I've no real hankering to own or listen to any.

^ observed in the wild

noted

congrats turrican, your medal is in the mail

The implication being that I said that to score points rather than, y'know, be truthful. I'm sure there are people that prefer the original 'All Along the Watchtower' or 'Mr. Tambourine Man' but I couldn't disagree with them more.

But you don't really care for music, do you?

Actually Turrican otm, I've never owned any Dylan and never had any interest in owning any Dylan. What's the big deal? Also I've never listened to Leonard Cohen for his lyrics, I've never had that much interest in them, it's good that they're good, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker if they weren't.

yes, really what is the big deal with Bob Dylan

can we get some baby boomers in here to explain his significance, surely one of them must have some thoughts on the subject

xxp But do you feel he wasn't the ideal interpreter of his own work? Plenty of ppl don't like Dylan, that's not remarkable

What is the big deal with not liking Bob Dylan?

Ha, right sorry! I don't care enougb about his work to have an opinion on whether or not he was its ideal interpreter, but certainly I can think of plenty of cover versions that I would rather listen to.

way prefer the original tambourine man, even though I think the Byrd's versh is magnificent, because i happen to love Dylans voice and the Byrds cover omits several verses!

Yeah that's what most Dylan songs need: more verses

LOL, I was going to say something about Dylan droning away for umpteen verses and plunking on his acoustic guitar... no thanks. But then I rememmber that I like Leonard Cohen droning away for umpteen verses and plunking on his acoustic guitar.

all covering dylan does is throw into relief how dependent his work is on his voice

In what way?

xxp Try this version -- no plunking, just delicate-as-fuck strumming: https://open.spotify.com/track/04FPeZBZtficEjF3WczEAl?si=JOrKf_qWTkSv2jd3d5QD3g

as good as the byrds' version is, it could almost be any song -- their arrangement is different and they sing fewer than half of the lyrics. it's an incredible recording, but it doesn't have much to do with the dylan song.

dylan's delivery of the "take me disappearing..." verse alone is a stronger vocal performance than anything i've ever heard from cohen (who i like ok).

his melodies are simple and his lyrics are sloppy synthesis held together by how thrilling and funny and affecting all of his enunciations and stresses are. he worked so well w the band because the "sprung quality" xgau described in their music-- always on the verge of falling apart into disassociated scraps-- is also in him as a singer; he holds his images together w his voice. obv there are exceptions (this wheel's on fire) but tambourine man isn't one imo.

(despite having prob his prettiest melody-- which the byrds always seem to me to have ground down a lil.)

I'd be at a loss to name a Dylan cover that was superior to his own version(s) tbh, though there are plenty of good ones.

― Οὖτις, Monday, July 23, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zwBHd4kll0

george harrison's "if not for you" is good. also love pj harvey's "highway 61."

Essential Bob Dylan Covers?

(I feel a little bad for turning a three-word parenthetical aside into a full-fledged thread derailment, lol)

In what way?

― Father Ted in Forkhandles (Tom D.)

All singers who write their material write for their voices; Dylan's unexpected stresses force listeners to stay on their toes.

Which is not the same thing as saying his songs are especially dependent on his voice - I know that's what Dylan fans think but not everyone is a Dylan fan.

I don't think they're (necessarily) dependent on his voice, I just think his performances are generally the best

There's a form/content meld in the best performers. Straighter singers making sense of Dylan's stresses and imagery often end up sounding clueless (to me).

As Brad said, I've no interest in anyone but Cohen singing "Coming Back to You" and "In My Secret Life," which is why I don't care much for that Jennifer Warren covers album.

You mean vocal performances or musical performances? Singing is one thing, there's also arrangements, production, the overall sound of a recording to be taken into account.

(xp)

Right, the whole package.

I think the whole package is often better delivered by someone else.

this thread is very weirdly contentious

The thread question was specifically who was the better songwriter - not performer - so I guess it shouldn't have anything to do with whose vocals you prefer or who had better stage presence or anything like that. Of course it's easier said than done to mentally separate the songs from the performances you know them by. Actually I'm not sure whether focusing specifically on the songwriting helps Simon more or Cohen. You'd think Cohen, since he has the more off-putting voice, but somehow focusing on the songwriting also helps Simon by taking the focus off his sometimes annoying persona. Tough question...

I think Paul Simon should cover "The Future"

cohen’s a realist, Simon’s a romantic. Comparing them is Apple and oranges.

Cohen's voice is cask-aged whiskey, never oft-putting

Yeah that's what most Dylan songs need: more verses

― nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, July 23, 2018 4:35 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

v disappointed to see people on an ilm thread complain abt Cohen and Dylan as singers, completely missing the point

i know, on a board about music of all things

just seems such a juvenile take on those artists

Dylan and Cohen - content providers for the great and good.

But you don't really care for music, do you?

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Monday, 23 July 2018 22:30 (yesterday) Permalink

Oh, I do, just that I don't really care for the way that Dylan does it.

(lol, I was just carrying on with the Cohen lyric riff from a few posts earlier)

Reading over the above convo, I can see why there was confusion... I wasn’t expressing surprise at the idea of ppl not liking Dylan (obviously, many don’t). It was the idea of someone with the pov: “Dylan’s a terrific songwriter, but he constantly let down his own songs (due to his voice, etc.), and they were consistently performed better by other artists.”

I’m still not sure that pov really exists! Simply being indifferent to Dylan, and preferring a few covers to his own recordings, doesn’t count

Ballad of a Hardman

(xp) oh well, that's me out of the discussion then!

Dylan fuckin rules as a singer ppl are nuts

back to the Simon vs. Cohen debate - I guess I reject the premise that you "have to" vote for Simon because he's more prolific, a "better" singer and has written a greater number of good songs

like honestly there are 20 Cohen songs that I would take over the entirety of Simon's career -- and I like Simon and he's written a lot of good songs - but like also I don't feel like he automatically "wins" because he wrote a ton of pretty fun B- songs like 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

also, I don't think that he's any more capable of writing "First We Take Manhattan" than Cohen is of writing "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"

you don't "have" to do anything but I definitely don't have 20 Cohen songs that I would take over the entirety of Simon's career. Graceland alone is better than anything Cohen ever did imo. "Still Crazy" and "Hallelujah" are about evenly matched. "Mrs. Robinson" is an incredible pop song, something Cohen never came close to (mostly cuz he didn't care about pop songs). "Mother and Child Reunion" is sooooo forward thinking, and also plays a key role in one of my favorite/funniest Sopranos moments. If these guys overlap in any real way it's probably Simon's "Duncan" which strikes me as v Cohen-like.

tbf Simon doesn't quite have anything like "Death of a Ladies Man" (the only Cohen album I need, really) but that one great, weird album alone is not enough next to Simon's multiple great, weird albums.

(xp) You're missing the part about Simon being a sophisticated writer of proper songs and Cohen being a coffee house strummer of melodically simplistic three chord pseudo poems.

so you're saying, Tom, that there are things that suck about both of them

I mean, let's say "Cohen being a coffee house strummer of melodically simplistic three chord pseudo poems" is true (he wasn't strumming much after 1988 when he recorded his best material but whatever) -- that's a compliment, right?

Shakey otm. also, rhythm of the saints

tbf Simon doesn't quite have anything like "Death of a Ladies Man" (the only Cohen album I need, really) but that one great, weird album alone is not enough next to Simon's multiple great, weird albums.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, July 24, 2018 10:19 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if Death of a Ladies Man is the only Cohen album you need then I guess I don't know what to say you should vote for Paul Simon

"Mother and Child Reunion" is sooooo forward thinking

I have no idea what this means.

I joked about it but if we're gonna weight Graceland that much don't the accusations of plagiarizing Los Lobos and also trying to copywrite (and then having to go back and credit eventually) African songs that he stole from have to be discussed?

You're missing the part about Simon being a sophisticated writer of proper songs and Cohen being a coffee house strummer of melodically simplistic three chord pseudo poems.

― Father Ted in Forkhandles (Tom D.), Tuesday, July 24, 2018 10:44 AM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck "proper songs"

I mean I like a lot of Simon's songs but that's str8 hongro homie

pretty sure tom was being facetious?

Yeah

woops! i can't tell anymore

was shakey kidding too?

Chase Knobbe? Have you Courtney Cox? (Tom D.)
Posted: 21 July 2018 at 11:10:08
"Proper" songwriting, yeah, right.

No that’s a Verified shakeup opinion

strawmanning Simon voters as Hongroists when we've done nothing of the sort is a predictable line of attack by Cohen voters. fact is, even Simon's three chord poem strummers pwn Cohen's

I like to imagine a bored Paul Simon somehow finding this thread and scrolling thru it on a Dell PC

"Mother and Child Reunion" is sooooo forward thinking

I have no idea what this means.

you could see it as just another in a pretty endless series of Simon capitalizing on collaboration (or appropriation, if you prefer) but this song is the first instance of Jamaican reggae hitting the American pop charts, that's huge.

I joked about it but if we're gonna weight Graceland that much don't the accusations of plagiarizing Los Lobos and also trying to copywrite (and then having to go back and credit eventually) African songs that he stole from have to be discussed?

we've had this argument

he should have given Los Lobos the publishing/songwriting credit

Graceland, regardless of the issue of credit, is an incredibly rich, beautifully made album

maybe if Cohen had stolen better songs and had better collaborators his catalog would be more interesting

no i would not give no false hope
on this strange and mournful day

you could see it as just another in a pretty endless series of Simon capitalizing on collaboration (or appropriation, if you prefer) but this song is the first instance of Jamaican reggae hitting the American pop charts, that's huge.

O RLY?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwrHCa9t0dM

that's ska

pretty sure tom was being facetious?

Yes, sorry, I thought that was more obvious!

strawmanning Simon voters as Hongroists when we've done nothing of the sort is a predictable line of attack by Cohen voters.

I think there's been a bit of that going on.

that's ska

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, July 24, 2018 11:32 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh my god

i mean i know ska isn't at all related or influential on reggae as fuckin paul simon but still

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwJ-g0iJ6w

1972 as well

i'm glad ive never known what "hongroism" is

I hate threads like this because I generally both of these artists but posts like Οὖτις' here push me toward berserk stannery of whatever he's against. this must be how usa republicans feel. shame on me for clicking on this.

the Nash single is what, 4 months after Simon's? The point is Simon should be given credit for being forward thinking about recognizing and collaborating with a newly emerging and really vibrant scene and genre, and foregrounding it for the American pop market. That is a cool thing.

xp

okay so you're asserting that simon was an influence on nash?

I make no claims re: influence

push me toward berserk stannery

Cohen fans' berserk stannery also drives me nuts, which is part of the reason I'm going in the opposite direction here. Let me tell you about this one time I had to listen to some asshole at a bar in an old man hat tell me about how the "three greatest songwriters ever" were Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen...

In 1968 Dekker's "Israelites" was released, eventually topping the UK Singles Chart in April 1969 and peaking in the Top Ten of the US Billboard Hot 100 in June 1969. Dekker was the first Jamaican artist to have a hit record in the US with a form and style that was purely Jamaican.

... disqualified for being rocksteady, not reggae?

does this U.S. number 9 billboard song count?

i mean it's def not some serious soundclash beyond the realms of dub shit like mother and child reunion but still

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Y2hv-3UCM

Hey!

I confess I had no idea Me Ears Are Alight was a hit in the US.

you guys are cute

xp

this must be how usa republicans feel.

haha, what?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3b/ec/9a/3bec9a7ca10f55cdcd932f860ac04ab8--art-garfunkel-paul-simon.jpg

welcome to jamrock

like what is so hard about acknowledging the significance of a major major American pop star using his economic and social power to spotlight an emerging genre from the third world

xp

and in an infinitely more nuanced and sympathetic way than fucking Clapton - recording the song in Kingston with Cliff's band etc.

this comparison is weird, i don't really think of cohen and simon in the same light at all. cohen is heavy and dark, simon is light and breezy. i love them both. those 70s simon albums are incredible and i feel joyful every time i put them on. that said they don't make me feel like a sleazy yearning divorcee the way the death of a ladies man does. fyi i am not a divorcee but death provides a view

I agree w all that too

guess I prefer light and breazy to heavy and dark, with a side of sleazy

this comparison is weird

both jews

or rather: light and breazy (with a side of sleazy) to heavy and dark

both jews - with a lot of religious (often non-Jewish) imagery in their lyrics too

also yea shakey otm re: mother & child reunion

The point is Simon should be given credit for being forward thinking about recognizing and collaborating with a newly emerging and really vibrant scene and genre, and foregrounding it for the American pop market. That is a cool thing.

exactly. it is also just a really great song and integrates the reggae rhythm & instrumentation in a way that is not tokenistic

like what is so hard about acknowledging the significance of a major major American pop star using his economic and social power to spotlight an emerging genre from the third world

xp

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, July 24, 2018 11:52 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because you said this:

you could see it as just another in a pretty endless series of Simon capitalizing on collaboration (or appropriation, if you prefer) but this song is the first instance of Jamaican reggae hitting the American pop charts, that's huge.

and then want to skasplain away other examples

ok lol @ skasplain

I do distinguish between ska, rocksteady and reggae what can I say

Rocksteady is a hop, skip and a jump away from reggae, all of those hits in the UK charts 1967 thru 1969 tend be described as reggae.

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/paul-simon-3.jpg

I'm like a steppin' razor
don't you watch my size
I'm dangerous

all of those hits in the UK charts 1967 thru 1969

UK's relationship to Jamaican music is vastly different from the US, let's see if you can guess why

I don't know what that's got to do with Desmond Dekker having a Top 10 US hit three years before Paul Simon introduced reggae to American record buyers.

Here's the dynamic duo together, along with Keef and Chuck.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/8367332-3x2-940x627.jpg

so now this is the thread where we argue about what the differences of Jamaican subgenres are? surely we will settle this epochal argument once and for all.

xp

And here they are both claiming to be the funny one:

https://cohencentric.com/2016/07/18/paul-simon-differentiates-songwriting-poetic-style-leonard-cohen/

xpost chuck's probably thanking paul inspiring him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNuyeTd5EAQ

-bob marley

i'd argue that "you can call me al" in which chevy chase introduced dancehall toasting to american audiences was just as influential as "mother and child reunion"

why do you keep bringing up "influence"

And here they are both claiming to be the funny one:

lenny way funnier, obviously

inclined to agree on that point, actually

always found simon to be a pretty dour presence on SNL (and yet it stop kind of worked because NYC..) I love listening to his recordings but cant seen to get stoked about live appearances

ugh phone sorry

results in prematurely, apparently Simon ranks #8 (just above Joni...) Leonard #16 https://www.rollingstone.com/interactive/lists-100-greatest-songwriters/

only in America

personal challop: "Bridge over Troubled Water" is not a v good song

s/t, Still Crazy and Graceland obv all classic albums, and I enjoyed Stranger to Stranger a lot

aaargh but why am I allowing myself to be pulled into this again, thread premise of is nonsensical and EVERYBODY KNOWS

apart from the lyrics Duncan is a p good song, enjoyed this recent live version a lot https://open.spotify.com/track/3niWojRbTFca3V7UjjUlG8

only in America

Are you gonna bust out a comparable list in MOJO or something for comparison?

he he no way

I may be wrong, but the idea that Simon is better than Cohen strikes me as something that would appeal more to Americans than Europeans

just like the idea that there is any chance the Beach Boys are better than the Beatles

Noel Gallagher #1, Liam a disappointing #23.

irl lol

I’m actually not sure how many Americans (even casual “music fans”) are familiar enough w/Cohen’s work to have an opinion... he’s not nearly as well-known as Simon.

They're both great. And both are among the very best lyricists. But my vote goes to Paul Simon.

And here they are both claiming to be the funny one:

lenny way funnier, obviously

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Tuesday, July 24, 2018 1:44 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seconding this. "Everybody knows you've been discreet but there were so many people you just had to meet without your clothes."

Is that really “funnier” than – I got up to wash my face / When I come back to bed, someone's taken my place?

Lenny croaking "I was born with the gift of a golden voice" on the latter day live records is funnier than any Cohen lyric in isolation

Is that really “funnier” than – I got up to wash my face / When I come back to bed, someone's taken my place?

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Thursday, July 26, 2018 7:43 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh yeah

"everybody knows" is both extremely hilarious and dark as night

That face-washing lyric is funny like Ten Summoners Tales.

The Cohen lyric ain’t too “funny” either, I guess is my point

Had no idea Larry Cohen was a songwriter. Did he compose Ray Parker, Jr.'s theme song to The Stuff?

...Okay, I guess I'll leave before I'm thrown out.

lol

TS: Larry Cohen v. Neil Simon

Cohen obviously

Roy Cohn vs. Shimon Peres

Been getting a lot of Paul Simon on road trip shuffle. Such great melodies and so many memorable turns of phrases. So different from. Cohen, who is deeper, darker and funnier.

Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

vs.

These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
a loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires, and baby

I was neutral on this poll, but I’m tilting more & more toward Simon...

amazingly rich comparison between two excerpted verses that aren't doing the same thing at all

ah we're lonely, we're romantic
and the cider's laced with acid
and the holy spirit's crying, "where's the beef?"
and the moon is swimming naked
and the summer night is fragrant
with a mighty expectation of relief
so we struggle and we stagger
down the snakes and up the ladder
to the tower where the blessed hours chime
and I swear it happened just like this
a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
the gates of love they budged an inch
i can't say much has happened since

Yeah you can find a funny/wry line over here or a deep/intelligent one over there; repeat all day. Both wrote lots of songs over many years, and you can cherry pick to make any point you like.

Sure, happy to do so... I’m not writing a thesis here, lol

The thing about Leonard Cohen-- and later, Smog-- is that it's not so much that the line itself is funny, not like Tom Lehrer funny, but the joke is that he's daring to sing something so self-effacing and sly in a song

What I like about Leonard's later lyrics is that he doesn't aim for poetry so much as he's aiming to create a mood and get some "good moments" in-- like that line from "Everybody Knows", or "if you want a doctor, I'll examine every inch of you", or "give me crack and anal sex", or any of the other creepy-uncle things he's decided are worthy of setting to music

I asked Paul Simon whether Cohen was in fact funnier than him and he told me “fucking DUH”

It was pretty funny the way he said it but I guess you had to be there

i'm just so mad about paul simon for no good reason, it's weird

What if you don't care too much about lyrics anyway?

it's not so much that the line itself is funny, not like Tom Lehrer funny, but the joke is that he's daring to sing something so self-effacing and sly in a song

I agree but something like this is true of singer/songwriters generally. Certainly for Simon, part of the humor is how just plain goofy he's willing to be; not everything needs to be the eye-rollingly grave portentousness (I Am a Rock), or evocative wistful middle-aged ennui (Slip Sliding Away).

A lot of the time he can just feel groovy, stand on a corner in Lafayette, meet Julio someplace, whatever. It is against that backdrop that the sudden slides into universality and truth have the best impact.

I may be wrong about this but with Cohen, I feel there is less of an on-ramp: a lot of the time he tends to go straight for the throat, with less scene-setting, less amicable banter on the way.

i know i've been hammering on about how much i love cohen itt but i do love every line in "graceland"

Funniest Simon line for me is from You're The One's great "Darling Lorraine":

All my life I've been a wanderer (background singers moan(
Not really, I've mostly lived near my parents' home

lol that's a good one

That is good, yes.

i know i've been hammering on about how much i love cohen itt but i do love every line in "graceland"

Even — “My traveling companion is nine years old / He is the child of my first marriage”?

Simon can have whiffs like that...

That's a great lyric.

Cohen vs. Simon is more like a battle of theses rather than an competition between like songwriters. Cohen's style of "let's take a pile of jokes and string them together" is godfather to Morrissey, to Smog, to Xiu Xiu-- though Cohen sings more about his relationship to the infinite than the latter songwriters, who keep things strictly interpersonal or (regrettably) political.

Simon is more classical metaphorical misdirection-- a song about viewing architecture that is actually about childbirth, a song about driving that is actually about a divorce. His twin shadow is undoubtedly Joni Mitchell, both as a "cloaking a heavy feeling in descriptive tableaux" and also musical cultural tourism. It sometimes makes me curious about a kind of moral bankruptcy, from an artistic perspective-- that Mitchell and Simon would pathologically take scenario after scenario after scenario and overlay their own internal emotional world, just as they engage in genre-exercise to prolong their own creative streak. Cohen, in comparison, writes his songs in a room

I dunno...did Cohen write anything as cloying as 'The Dangling Conversation'?

Gotta say, it's kind of fascinating to me to compare strictly their 80s and beyond works. Both acts hit different sorts of late career peaks. I love Simon's lyrics on Graceland and Saints, but maybe because Simon has always done the middle aged ennui thing, even when he was young, I feel Cohen does more with his enroaching old age. But then, he was around a decade older than Simon, right? 30 or 35 when his first album came out, iirc.

I dunno...did Cohen write anything as cloying as 'The Dangling Conversation'?

Maybe, but we don't know, because he kept it to himself. This is an interesting difference.

It's hard to fault Simon for being successful when he was quite young, but it means that a bunch of his half-baked and ill-considered early work is out there for all to see. Cohen in contrast appears to have worked slowly, revised a lot, and released only the things he thought were ready. The result is that we see only the iceberg-tips of his work, whereas with the more-prolific Simon we see the good and bad stuff in equal measure.

Indeed, when Simon releases his demos and early drafts, they're often surprisingly good. Some of the demos and early versions from Rhythm of the Saints include lines that are better than anything most of us will ever write - and he threw them away.

These are different approaches to career and image management.

I harbor a suspicion that Cohen has written some very bad poetry that we just don't know about.

Well he wrote a bad novel everyone knows about

that wouldn't distinguish him from very many poets imo

There's that funny story of Cohen and Dylan talking, where Cohen says Hallelujah took him like 15 years and Dylan mentions some song that took him five minutes.

"Beautiful Losers" was not universally panned, it had its proponents. Kind wanna read it

some song that took him five minutes

"I and I" from Infidels

The bit that's always missed out from that anecdote is that "Wiggle Wiggle" took him 15 years to write.

Awesome cover and Simon tears up (much like emmylou did when they dedicated a song to her)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pa3xOakbGTo

― No angel came (Ross), Friday, July 20, 2018 7:54 AM (one week ago)

thanks for posting.

man, i don't think i could sing America in front of Paul Simon...

I loved beautiful losers

LOL @ Tom D.

I harbor a suspicion that Cohen has written some very bad poetry that we just don't know about.

Mostly it's out of print. His free verse has lots of clunkers, especially in the collection Death of a Lady's Man (released simultaneously with Death of a Ladies' Man.

Same time, that collection has one of my favorites of anything Cohen wrote: How to Speak Poetry.

The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.

that First Aid Kit clip is great

I read Beautiful Losers years ago. It's hallucinatory and weird, but not nearly as transgressive as it might have been. It's no Under the Volcano; it's not even Henry Miller.

Almost nothing is an under the volcano

I was 17 when I read BL btw

Yeah, daft comparison. Was just reaching for something it felt like Cohen was reaching for.

I want to reread it. I liked it more than miller at the time - well like I say, I loved it. And the BSM song comes directly from it

I read Beautiful Losers aloud to my bf on a long road trip and it was super fun

The plot is stupid but the prose is great and there are so many funny moments, when he documents all the fluids that have occupied his lover's belly-button i.e.

i know i've been hammering on about how much i love cohen itt but i do love every line in "graceland"

Even — “My traveling companion is nine years old / He is the child of my first marriage”?

Simon can have whiffs like that...

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Friday, July 27, 2018 5:56 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am not really a lyrics person and I've always really liked that lyric a lot

why is that a whiff? just curious to hear the reasoning

that is a great line, it says so much about emotional distance that he doesn't just come out and say "I'm driving to Graceland with my son"

fgti's post upthread is very on point imo, although I think it's a little harsh to overly judge Simon (and Mitchell) for pathologically tak[ing] scenario after scenario after scenario and overlay[ing] their own internal emotional world cuz I feel like this is a thing pretty much all of us do just by living our lives on a daily basis. The world and its events are out there, and we relate to it through this medium of our own perceptions. Approaching songwriting that strikes me as a pretty organic and relatable thing to do, as it mirrors people's own lived experiences.

also I don't know what Cohen, in comparison, writes his songs in a room means - that Cohen is more direct? I guess so.

Simon only ever wrote in gazebos

this is widely known

It was a pun on "Songs From A Room" iirc

ok lol

I'm just thinking about how Simon's songs take place in various spaces and times and contain references to Places and Historical Occurrences, constantly referencing how the sight of the external causes his memory to recall the personal, he explicitly states this synapse all the time, i.e. "And in remembering a road sign / I am remembering a girl when I was young".

Leonard does something different, and I'd have to reread his oeuvre in order to really make any observations of any worth

Thankfully he only made like what 11 albums? brb

xxxp
That “child of my first marriage” line is super clunky to my ears, but cool if you guys like it

Was listening to the Graceland reissue, and a track is Simon talking about the title track. I've heard it a million times and a) never noticed its intentional echoes of Sun and b) never noticed the lyrics were inspired by and literally about driving from New Orleans to see Graceland. He sings it with the melancholy of metaphor.

xp (It also sort of weirdly depersonalizes his son, as “product of a marriage” — like, what does the narrator’s now-adult son think of that line? — but maybe he achieved what he was going for with that line.)

there are a bunch of asshole-parent lines on that album! (the worst is definitely being the narrator in That Was Your Mother)

the road trip in the song strikes me as Simon making a pilgrimage, sure, but also finding himself and trying to create a connection with his son who is at enough of a distance that he's a traveling companion and a product of marriage. It's a tiny bit lol, mostly sad.

this thread is making me want to re-watch One Trick Pony

fgti's post upthread is very on point imo, although I think it's a little harsh to overly judge Simon (and Mitchell) for pathologically tak(ing) scenario after scenario after scenario and overlay(ing) their own internal emotional world cuz I feel like this is a thing pretty much all of us do just by living our lives on a daily basis. The world and its events are out there, and we relate to it through this medium of our own perceptions.

this is called "songwriting" imo

songwrit(ing)

This thread is making me want to re-watch My Little Pony.

This thread is making me want to listen to My Pal Foot-Foot

michael hurley.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

let's take a pile of jokes and string them together

----honestly, what? This isn't so much a bad description of LC as a genuine "look if you've never heard the guy, it's ok" type one.

One thousand percent Paul Simon. Love the video for You Can Call Me, Al with Chase and him dancing.

:)

i guess it boils down to what you want from your songwriters.

I saw Simon's The Capeman on Broadway (gratis for professional reasons), and it was not terrible. What would a Cohen jukebox musical look like?

hafta say "I can't forget but I don't remember what" is something i find myself feeling almost every day now

I can't see that working in any way, shape or form without the man himself. xp

oh come on ILX can totally write this jukebox musical

<curtain rises on the Chelsea Hotel>....

Suzanne enters stage left, with a mesh shopping bag containing tea and oranges.

Backlit, behind the hotel set: a marble arch.

100% a Cohen musical or seven have played at a fringe festival in Brighton or Edinburgh

wins: yes, and everybody knows

Setting: a hair salon

Leonard's father, a hairdresser, discovers a young Leonard poring over a nudist magazine

A chorus comprised of Bob Dylan, Allan Ginsberg, and Phil Spector serenades the hair salon's clientele as Leonard's father chases him around the stage

"That a son of mine should come home with his hard-on, oy!"

Night Magic is a 1985 Canadian-French musical film written by Leonard Cohen and Lewis Furey and directed by Furey. The film stars Nick Mancuso as Michael, a down on his luck musician whose fantasies begin to come true after he meets an angel (Carole Laure).

yeah but which one of them has the bigger penis

...but you don't really care for what's between us
And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the holy dong
The Cohen or the Simon type of penis

I love Paul Simon, but I can't remember the last time I listened to one of his albums. I listen to a Leonard Cohen album once every week or two.

But my darling says
"Leonard, just let it go by
That old silhouette
On the great western sky"
So I pick out a tune
And they move right along
And they're gone like the smoke
And they're gone like this dong

Simon has more craft and greater range, but Cohen moves me far, far more.

And they're gone like this dong

I love Paul Simon, but I can't remember the last time I listened to one of his albums. I listen to a Leonard Cohen album once every week or two.

― Leaghaidh am brón an t-anam bochd (dowd), Tuesday, August 7, 2018 5:39 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I imagine this describes many of us, or many more of us than "I listen to Simon all the time and only occasionally break out some Leonard Cohen". But if we're still going to overwhelmingly nod to Simon as the better songwriter, I guess it's as simple as Cohen's lyrical themes speak to a lot of us a lot more.

Serious question: are we really counting "listening to an album" in 2018 instead of "I listened to a few Simon tracks in the last month on my phone/Spotify"?

i guess it boils down to what you want from your songwriters.

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, August 7, 2018 11:47 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, and Cohen gives me all I ever wanted from this type of music whereas Simon is 'just' great. Not denying Simon's talent but sometimes it just clicks with an artist and notion of talent are thrown out of the window.

To me the entity known as "Paul Simon" is at least five different guys. Chipper teenager, S&G dude, cocky 70s shrimp, wistful boomer, savvy but problematic world-music conduit, late tired sage, SNL presence, etc. Each of them requires a different mood to cause me to listen to him.

In contrast, I think I only know of two entities called "Leonard Cohen." I call them folky and spooky.

lol that is very otm.

Would vote in a poll of Simon personas (voting cocky 70s shrimp btw)

never really occurred to me til now that Cohen's voice took a pretty straight path from choirboy tenor to rumbling bass over the course of 50 years

Serious question: are we really counting "listening to an album" in 2018 instead of "I listened to a few Simon tracks in the last month on my phone/Spotify"?

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 7, 2018 3:58 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk these are both p album-oriented artists for me

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

nice

wow, nice

Cohen vs. Simon is more like a battle of theses rather than an competition between like songwriters. Cohen's style of "let's take a pile of jokes and string them together" is godfather to Morrissey, to Smog, to Xiu Xiu-- though Cohen sings more about his relationship to the infinite than the latter songwriters, who keep things strictly interpersonal or (regrettably) political.

Simon is more classical metaphorical misdirection-- a song about viewing architecture that is actually about childbirth, a song about driving that is actually about a divorce. His twin shadow is undoubtedly Joni Mitchell, both as a "cloaking a heavy feeling in descriptive tableaux" and also musical cultural tourism. It sometimes makes me curious about a kind of moral bankruptcy, from an artistic perspective-- that Mitchell and Simon would pathologically take scenario after scenario after scenario and overlay their own internal emotional world, just as they engage in genre-exercise to prolong their own creative streak. Cohen, in comparison, writes his songs in a room

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, July 27, 2018 1:37 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is such a great post.

N I C E

I know, I teared up a little bit knowing how pleased Lenny must be with these results

Haha did NOT expect that. Silent majority, you ppl rule

Wow, awesome. I though Cohen would get crushed, so I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Thanks Eyeball Kicks
Good poll results
I love both these songwriters

Oh my I really thought Simon was running away with it.

dead guy always has a leg up

did not vote, happy with results

ime experience with any of these kinds of "canonical" matchups (see also the recent RTX vs. Pavement poll), there's a vocal contingent on the thread arguing for one side, and then the silent majority swoops in and votes in massive numbers for the more boring answer. This has happened a lot.

He shall thus be known as 'Interesting' Paul Simon.

Poll results would have been quite different if conducted offline.

“You wouldn’t vote like that to my face”

we couldn’t get enough volunteers to ring up all the ilxors to get their opinion so on here it’ll have to remain

I proudly voted Cohen and am not a lurker, fwiw

i didn't vote bc i didn't agree w/ the premise

The silent majority wasn’t silent just less obnoxious iirc

You guys know exactly what I mean - this small community doesn't really represent the tastes of the real world. Simon would win in a landslide if that were the case, and everyone here knows it.

thx cpt obv

don't recall anyone ever suggesting that ILM polls were any kind of reflection of real world opinions.

I've taken part in four polls of this sort 'in the real world' in the last 24 hours. Can't move for the bloody things.

a poll of randoms/12 CD types would have Simon winning
a poll of sophisticated music fans would also have Simon winning I'd think
then there's the murky lurky middle

I think we'd all feel better if we got back to our Leonard Cohen stage musical

(I would, anyway)

either that or my long-dreamed of Lou Reed/Paul Simon gritty NY 70s buddy cop movie

(Leonard Cohen can play one of their sleazy informants)

a poll of sophisticated music fans would also have Simon winning I'd think

ooh sophisticated music fans!

Can’t believe all these boring flyover country rubes who prefer Leonard Cohen

ime experience with any of these kinds of "canonical" matchups (see also the recent RTX vs. Pavement poll), there's a vocal contingent on the thread arguing for one side, and then the silent majority swoops in and votes in massive numbers for the more boring answer. This has happened a lot.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, August 8, 2018 10:26 AM (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this comparison makes no sense. pavement was far more popular and well known that RTX, simon is far more popular and well known than cohen.

Can’t believe all these boring flyover country rubes who prefer Leonard Cohen

― omar little, Wednesday, August 8, 2018 11:12 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we should go to a small town diner to talk to laid off steelworker trump voters about which track off songs from a room is their favorite

pavement was far more popular and well known that RTX, simon is far more popular and well known than cohen.

idk out there "in the real world" yes, but I'm talking about relative to ILM. In both cases the more boring answer (Pavement/Cohen) won, why because corny indie fux00rs

fwiw I didn't vote in the Pavement/Trux poll cuz I honestly couldn't decide, I love them both and they do v different things. But I was not entirely surprised when all the "RTX" posts were followed by Pavement winning handily.

simon is far more popular and well known than cohen

If you're talking audience, then I'm pretty confident more people have heard or own some version of "Hallelujah" at this point than anything by Simon. For whatever that is worth. What is the most iconic/perennially ubiquitous Paul Simon song? "Sound of Silence" or something like that? Are there any Paul Simon songs that, say, a high schooler or middle schooler would immediately know?

"heard or own" is a low bar

idk what Simon's most widely known song is. Mrs. Robinson? Me & Julio?

If you're talking audience, then I'm pretty confident more people have heard or own some version of "Hallelujah" at this point than anything by Simon

uh what? Yes, it's true they -- whoever they are -- may know a song called "Hallelujah," maybe even identify Leonard Cohen, but this is a world where people will think "Paul Simon" and name "The Boxer," "Mrs. Robinson," "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," "You Can Call Me Al," "Me and Julio" and so on.

i don't know guys, a lot of songs, you can call me al or any number of incredibly popular songs you mentioned and many others. like it's not even close simon has many standards.

but i'll dip out and let simon fans jack themselves off about their really advanced tastes in music

Heard or own is definitely a low bar! I doubt many under the age of, I dunno, 30 know much about either artist, so knowing just one song from one of them might be it!

I mean, Cohen's Various Positions wasn't even released in the U.S. when it came out in the early 80s.

A few years later, Cohen accepted an award and said about Columbia Records "I have always been touched by the modesty of their interest in my work."

Which has nothing to do with quality, just popularity.

Giggling at the conspiracy theories explaining why Simon got robbed.

idk what Simon's most widely known song is. Mrs. Robinson? Me & Julio?

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, August 8, 2018 4:24 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At this point, I'd say 'You Can Call Me Al', actually!

http://simonandgarfunkelnews.web.tv/video/the-sweeney-sisters-paul-simon-bridge-over-troubled-water-webtv__bloizapjrnk

omg watching this again serious lols