Leonard Cohen

Leonard Norman Cohen was born September 21, 1934, and spent the 1950s and early 1960s writing novels and poems before releasing his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1967. Three spare folk records followed through 1974, then a jarring detour with Phil Spector's wall-of-sound production on Death of a Ladies' Man in 1977. He returned to form with Recent Songs in 1979, blending acoustic textures with jazz and Mediterranean threads, then released "Hallelujah" on Various Positions in 1984 - the song that would outlive him in a thousand covers. I'm Your Man in 1988 pushed him toward synthesizers; The Future in 1992 went dark with political unrest. After nearly a decade away, he came back in 2001 with Ten New Songs, a hit across Canada and Europe, then discovered in 2005 that his manager had stolen most of his money and sold his publishing rights. He toured relentlessly to recover, then closed with three final albums between 2012 and 2016. You Want It Darker arrived three weeks before he died on November 7, 2016.