Take This Longing From My Poll: best song on The Essential Leonard Cohen

Oh man, tough tough tough

This is a surprisingly excellent "best of," maybe one of the few "essential"-type sets I've heard, esp. the second disc. I think it might be what I reach for most often when I want to listen to Cohen. Might go w/ "Tower of Song" because it is one of my fave songs ever. Every line is incredible -- I think that any songwriter would kill to have written it.

not a single song from Death of a Ladies Man = fuck this shit

haha, well I guess he has kind of disowned that album? But surely "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" is one of his best.

"Paper Thin Hotel" ftw

oh yeah, haha, forgot that there's nothing from Ladies Man! Cohen himself compiled this, so I guess he reaaalllllly doesn't like that album. But it is so good.

Anthem in a heartbeat. That song is to me what I imagine Amazing Grace must be like for everybody who likes that song.

Those last four songs are amazing, especially "1000 Kisses Deep." Though there's a recording of Cohen just reading that lyric that might be better.

This is one that could change for me on any given day. Today it's So Long, Marianne.

it's really a toss-up between So Long, Marianne, The Partisan, Chelsea Hotel #2, Hallelujah, Night Comes On, I'm Your Man, First We Take Manhattan, Dance Me To The End Of Love (Live), Waiting For The Miracle, In My Secret Life, and A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Hmmm, I've never heard any of the last four, or, really, anything he's written since his "comeback." Guess I should remedy that. xp

Still don't know how I'll vote either. Possibilities: So Long Marianne, Famous Blue Raincoat, Take This Longing, First We Take Manhattan. Hallelujah is great, but I'm not sure if any Lenny version really does it justice (compared to, say, John Cale).

Those last four songs are amazing

They are so good! I was surprised as hell.

on a glimpse,the partisan

for some reason, I've never heard "Dear Heather" (which came out after this comp, I believe). Is it good? Also: anyone heard the new Isle of Wight 1970 live release?

Went for Alexandra Leaving. Had me staring at the radio kind of hypnotised first time I heard it & made me realise I should have been paying attention to him still.

"Closing Time".

This is amazingly dud free. Went with "Tower Of Song" but they're all ace.

The Stranger Song
Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
So Long, Marianne
Famous Blue Raincoat
Chelsea Hotel #2
Hallelujah
I'm Your Man
Everybody Knows
Tower Of Song
Ain't No Cure
First We Take Manhattan
Dance Me To The End Of Love (Live)
The Future
Democracy
Anthem

honestly, it could be any of these, depending on the day or mood. ive been going back to him a bit lately for some reason. when i was going through a kind of rough break up recently, so long, marianne seemed to sum up and even redeem what i was feeling with that just credible melodrama/theatricality l. cohen is so adept at creating. though i think maybe anthem is my answer too...id like hear what peoples' favorite lines are. theres ones in all of these that either give me vague pangs of heartache or make me smile. lately these from the stranger song:

Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there's a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

should go back top ten new songs too, i guess.

to ten

Dear Heather is boring as hell.

Yes, this is an amazing compilation. Since buying it last summer it's the only Cohen I play. Too bad he played none of the late seventies/early eighties obscurities when I saw him last Saturday.

I voted for "First We Take Manhattan."

not a single song from Death of a Ladies Man = fuck this shit

Actually, the THREE-DISC edition, which I own and got at a special Target rate, includes the title track.

Impressive how many votes for his later stuff. But that first album is a doozy...

The Stranger Song

I prefer his earlier albums, tbh

Ha -- I can't listen to his early work; the eighties synth sound strengthens the essential chintz of his obsessions. But, wow, the live version of "Bird On a Wire" he's performing these days puts the lie to anyone claiming he can't sing.

"Manhattan", but very narrowly. An embarrassment of riches on that CD.

Leonard Cohen was born with the gift of a severely un-golden voice. I mean, it is really pretty awful. He does wonderful things with his limited natural gifts, however.

okay, i am going to take the plunge and vote 'Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye?'

Why? My mom used to sing it to me when I was a kid, before I went to sleep.

The Pain Teens version of "The Story of Isaac" is one of my all time favorite cover tunes. It takes on new meaning when sung by a lady.

"Waiting for the Miracle": even with that toothless staccato keyboard, it's still a dream of the end of the world. Cohen's voice is in my favorite shape of his whole career: completely and utterly gone.

My choice was almost burned through and left on the side of the road by the deathly light of "Closing Time," which I sincerely think harbors the greatest lyrics ever.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Tough. I saw him in concert about a week ago and he played most of these songs.

Voted "The Partisan". But what a choice.

Extremely close call between The Stranger Song and Famous Blue Raincoat. Lucky that Queen Victoria isn't listed, which would complicate matters seriously.

not a single song from Death of a Ladies Man = fuck this shit

Actually, the THREE-DISC edition, which I own and got at a special Target rate, includes the title track.

o_o

I heard that "Memories" was the only song from that album that Cohen didn't disown?

i refuse to choose among the early classics, so i'm just leapfrogging them and voting "everybody knows."

but while i'm here i wanted to post this again because it's so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGGSo530bdA

this is beyond impossible but tonight it feels like chelsea hotel or in my secret life

"The Partisan" for keeping the straightest face but y'know any and/or all.

not a single song from Death of a Ladies Man = fuck this shit

challop. It's a rank album and deserved to be left off

nah, it's awesome.

Especially "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On"

Sorry but it seems to me that those people who are repping for DoaLM on this thread have got bugger all understanding of what Cohen is about. It's meditative music, yeah? It's quiet, modest, it doesn't hit you about the head but it gets under your (new) skin. That's why DoaLM is such an aberration and fully deserves to be expunged from the Cohen canon.

while I'm on, Judy Collins in that youtube clip is so frigging superfluous it's not true. I know all about how she encouraged him to get up onstage in the first place, but really, he should have jettisoned that woman pronto.

I've been watching Leonard Cohen live clips on YouTube all morning. Weird to find yourself crying at your desk watching 30yr old footage on youtube but there ya go. Going to buy that Isle of Wight DVD after work today. Thanks for this thread.

anagram it's not necessarily a bad thing for an artist to get forced out of his comfort zone

that said, new skin >>>> ladies man

I like Ladies Man despite the awful mix -- all that unintended reverb.

now so long dental plan
it's time that we began
to pay
for
li
sa's
braces
all
by ourselves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iYxrsd59-E

"First We Take Manhattan" (to take one example) is not quiet or meditative, and it is very firmly ensconced in the Cohen canon.

it is very firmly ensconced in the Cohen canon

That it may be, but it doesn't mean I have to like it (and I've been listening to Cohen for twenty years and have seen him live sixteen times, so I know what I'm talking about)

What do you dislike about it?

well, then, obviously your opinion on him is the only one that matters. xp

What do you dislike about it?

Well I disliked the whole of I'm Your Man when it first came out, and despite repeated listenings I've never really grown to love it as I do pretty much every other Cohen record (except DoaLM, natch). I've never gotten past the cheap synths, the drum machines, the 80s production and, more than anything else, the lyrics. Cohen explained at the time of the album's release that he had gone through some kind of songwriting crisis after Various Positions which resulted in him dropping the elevated imagery and plumping instead for a flat, conversational language. That's what I find hard to deal with in pretty much all of I'm Your Man, with the exception of "Take This Waltz" of course, which is a translation.

voted "Take This Longing" btw, his most sublime and awe-inspiring love song.

Dunno, I guess what I like about Cohen is the way he kind of rises above any musical setting you put him in, whether it's the polite chamber folk of the early stuff, or the spectorian bombast of Ladies Man or the more mechanical sounds of I'm Your Man. His lyrical vision/voice always comes to the fore. So I like that there's different sounds on his records through the years, as opposed to them all sounding like Songs From A Room, or something.

anagram, you're overstating Cohen's penchant for "flat, conversational language" during this period. Do you think this is "flat" and "conversational":

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

Also, the loss of his voice was, like Dylan's similar triumph in the nineties, the greatest thing to happen to him in his late middle age. Instead of straining beyond his rage, he managed to render these lyrical sonorities with all the flatness they deserved, thus bringing out their ironies.

Yeah, and also, starting with Ladies Man, Cohen discovered a welcome sense of (black) humor. He's one of the funnier lyricists around!

To each his own, and so on, but the early Cohen fell all too often into camp.

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

So many songs worthy of a vote.

Best song not on this comp: Lover, Lover, Lover

to decry the production & arrangements on i'm your man while embracing the production & arrangements on various positions is kinda weird & suspect imo, I think leonard cohen may be one of those artists whose best work is always "behind him" at the moment you discover him i.e. you like his history but his presence in the present is less comfortable

this would also account somewhat for how he's risen in stature over time in the estimation of lotsa ppl

my fave song might be dress rehearsal rag. cuz i'm goth.

can't believe "bird on the wire" got no votes, I want the first few lines on my tombstone

Heym speaking of goth, and songs not on this comp, I just remembered "Avalanche". Sometimes I think that song secretly and singlehandedly gave birth to goth in some dark alleyway.

*Hey,

I want the first few lines on my tombstone

That's what Kris Kristofferson said as well, apparently.

I don't know if I voted in this, but if I did it was for "So Long, Marianne" for its gorgeous chorus. I was tempted by "Bird on a Wire" and "Suzanne" but really I prefer the Fairport Convention covers over the originals. So I guess my #2 would be "Famous Blue Raincoat" though maybe I prefer the Leo Sayer "cover" also.

also that makes it sound like I don't really like Cohen but I do! I've just never examined what I like about him before---maybe I do prefer the later stuff.

Blimey, it must be knock anagram day on this thread. From the top:

well yeah those 'FWTM' lyrics aren't particularly flat, but they're deficient in other ways – kind of grandstanding, so to speak. Not exactly what I expected from Cohen, to put it mildly. And if you look at something like "I Can't Forget" you'll see what I mean by flat and conversational. I mean, this guy is a great poet, and many of his lyrics stand up as – indeed, exist as – poems in their own right. Not the I'm Your Man lyrics, though (except for "Take This Waltz", which is different).

instead of straining beyond his rage, he managed to render these lyrical sonorities with all the flatness they deserved, thus bringing out their ironies

See, I look at it differently. Yeah he sounded kind of strained some of the time on the early records, but not all the time by any means. I'm not a great one for irony in music. Plus, Dylan's 90s voice is truly horrible (except on Time out of Mind, that is).

Yeah, and also, starting with Ladies Man, Cohen discovered a welcome sense of (black) humor. He's one of the funnier lyricists around!

Well that album was an aberration, and he returned to his earlier style with Recent Songs. I appreciate the humour in his later work ("she's a hundred but she's wearing something tight" being a classic line) but if I want to hear humour in music I'll listen to They Might Be Giants or something. I'd rather wallow in seriousness.

To each his own, and so on, but the early Cohen fell all too often into camp

See I just don't get that at all. There is no less camp music in the entire canon of popular music than the first three Cohen records.

to decry the production & arrangements on i'm your man while embracing the production & arrangements on various positions is kinda weird & suspect imo

The two albums have completely different soundworlds I would have thought. Various Positions is mostly countryish, acoustic, with lotsa slide guitar and suchlike. The fallen majesty of that voice is perfectly suited to things like "The Captain" (one of Cohen's most overlooked and greatest songs). Put him with drum machines and synths and it just gets squashed up against them.

I don't know. "Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud" is pretty uncampy.

Shuolda voted The Future instead of Partisan so it got at least one vote.