#FlashbackSunday Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1968)

Of all the singer-songwritters around the music world probably one of the most iconic of all is Mr. Leonard Cohen. He was the first folk artist to make approach to the sound without being part of a political folk movement, such as Joan Baez or the king Bob Dylan, and though he has been an inspiration to everyone that takes a guitar in his hands and tries to become a singer-songwritter the real contribution of Leonard Cohen is the expansion of the genre of folk.

The nature of his songwriting is very lonely and with literal references due to his past as an author on both poetry and a novelist, he touches with complexity stuff like love, relationships and religion. Something that inherited from novels and poetry his songwriting is the expression, only a novelist is capable of creating characters that discover each other without saying who they are, sort of mirror characters that reflect realities of another, the way of composing his songs have this sort of story telling complexities, and everything started in 1968 with “Songs Of Leonard Cohen”, it was his first album at 33 years old and started with his version of “Suzzane”.

“Suzzane” is one of the most iconic songs of Cohen, first recorded by Judy Collins in 1966 then when he made his album he recorded his version, this songs is the one that has most covers of Cohen, covered by artists like Neil Diamond, Nina Simone, Halley Belafonte, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos and many other influential artists, not to forget the Beck tribute to Cohen making the complete album along side with Devendra Banhart and MGMT in 2009, for one of his record club albums.

Also in the movement of creating a new kind of folk, Cohen was on the center of the movement that later reached maximum capacity with other singer songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond and Tim Buckley (father of another legendary artist Jeff Buckley, who someday I’ll flashback to him as well).

I’m just here to say that this album has is great or that it has historical importance, but in part is important to understand a lot of artist who admit and covered songs of Cohen due his amazing influence such as Nick Cave, Jeff Buckley with his famous cover of “Hallelujah”, Nirvana with the unplugged “Pennyroyal Tea” and the list goes on.

Part of the good music I cover in this blog has Leonard Cohen written in the veins, that’s why I thought it would be important to take some time and pay my respect.

Tracklist:

1. Suzanne
2. Master Song
3. Winter Lady
4. The Stranger Song
5. Sisters of Mercy
6. So Long, Marianne
7. Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
8. Stories of the Street
9. Teachers
10. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

Rate: 10/10

Google That Shit!