More about: Leonard Cohen

Few songs have the effect that ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ inspires. Even in its opening notes, the fingers on the guitar strings feel heavy as though played through a heartbroken sigh. Then the vocals - which could only belong to Leonard Cohen - come in and the song always stops me in my tracks.

With no acrobatics, no climaxes and no real changes from the steady tempo, this song perfect symbolises Cohen’s writer-first approach to music: an industry he almost reluctantly stepped into when his novels wouldn’t pay the bills. Well, thank god they didn’t, because who else has ever released a song - sorry, a whole album - this simple but with lyrics so gripping and gut-wrenching that they inspired 50 years’ worth of future artists?

Sandwiched between the optimistic ‘Bird On A Wire’, and the heart ache of ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’, Leonard Cohen’s 1971 album Songs Of Love and Hate takes an important place in his discography. With an iconic cover and housing two of his best known tracks, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ and ‘Avalanche’, the record quickly became a must in the tool-kit of the poetic songwriters he helped breed. Take Nick Cave, for example, one of the most influential lyricists of our time, who references the album as a turning point in this writing career. Dubbing him the “the greatest songwriter of them all”, Cave discovered Cohen’s music at age 11 and held his confessional lyrics close, allowing them to guide his own practice in the form.

It's this that makes Songs Of Love and Hate so special to writers and listeners alike: hearing it feels like pressing an eavesdropping ear up against the confessional as clear moments of expository honesty emerge from his narratives. Both lyrically and sonically, this is an album that feels raw and naked, pulled right from the pages of a notepad kept in his 1960s home of Hydra with his former lover Marianne.

Unlike his other records, which feature songs that were drafted and perfected over years and years, Songs Of Love And Hate was mostly recorded within a week. The exception, ‘Sing Another Song, Boys’, was recorded at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival as a last-minute addition, the line “this one has grown old and bitter” acting as a tagline for the album. Full of his signature choppy guitar style, it’s odd that Cohen went on to dislike this record, regarding it as almost a throwaway. Some of these tracks were never played outside the recording studio.

But 50 years on, and this album's immediacy and authenticity make it an enduring classic. Before Phil Spector got his evil hands on Death of a Ladies’ Man or Cohen’s voice dropped to the husky depths of his later albums, Songs Of Love And Hate remains the perfect relic of who he was as a writer and the position he held in the late 60s and early 70s; an accidental musician singing imagery-packed poems over simple yet lively guitar. 

With lyrics this powerful, Cohen seems to allow the music to be an after-thought to the poetry he’s singing, bringing us to the confessional booth as he muses on his wrong-doings, holding his hands up to all the crimes of love he committed and sadness over their consequences. 

I could write you a novel on why the ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ lyrics "and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes / I thought it was there for good so I never tried" are some of the greatest ever penned. But for a moment I want to focus on ‘Love Calls You By Your Name’, a criminally-underrated gem of a track that’s too often missed when we talk about Cohen. 50 years on, this song still feels so heavy with specificity. Darting from image to image, Cohen always had a way of packing a song with personal memories and anecdotes that he was never too shy about revealing, but something about this track manages to both expose and be tight-lipped, with nostalgic verses bubbling up to big statement choruses. "I leave the lady meditating / On the very love which I, I do not wish to claim" is a line that gets me every time; so full of self-flagellation and sung so nonchalantly, we’ve been seeing recreations of Cohen’s confessional lyricism ever since - but no one manages it quite as charmingly as the master. 

Tying up the loose ends of left behind loves, Songs Of Love And Hate feels like the bitter end of all the sweet stories told on Leonard Cohen's early albums. The mix of gut-wrenching odes and energetic live tracks here perfectly capture the talent and presence that made Cohen internationally-loved and respected. They demonstrate the late artist's ability to expose his emotions while keeping his cool...an ability that has meant five decades of musicians and writers hold him close; our patron saint of lyricism.  

More about: Leonard Cohen