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Every Leonard Cohen Album Ranked

14. Various Positions (1984)

Cohen wasn't the only artist to trip over during his transition into the 80s and fall into its excesses, but he fell hard. There's an obvious parallel between this synth-heavy album and Neil Young's Trans, but whereas Young dove head first into this new sound without giving a fuck what anybody would think of it (least of all Geffen Records), Cohen just tried to awkwardly retrofit his established model of songwriting to the production trends of the time. I have nothing against synthesizers and drum machines; I have nothing against M&Ms either, but I'm not going to stir them into fried rice. The album's best known song  "Hallelujah" suffers the most. It famously had life breathed into it by Jeff Buckley a decade later (and by John Cale before that), but here, its quaint, plastic sound obscures its inherent beauty. Similarly, "Heart with No Companion" sounded more vital on Ron Sexsmith's first album. Cohen got a better handle on the times four years later on I'm Your Man.

13. Death of a Ladies Man (1977)

Cohen ended a brilliant four album run with this misbegotten team up with Phil Spector, in which the latter's "wall of sound" stood in for the former's usual starkness and it all went about as well as you'd expect. Spector increasingly exerted his influence on the album as Cohen gradually ceded control. The hideous flange effect on Cohen's vocals on "Iodine" is a low point on an album without many high points. Some of these songs (including "Memories") might have been salvageable had Cohen just stepped away entirely and handed them to another singer. "Don't Go Home with Your Hard On", in which you might be able to hear Bob Dylan on backing vocals, acquits itself through sheer cockiness (pun intended) and almost sounds as if it could have been on a parallel universe Blonde on Blonde.

12. Dear Heather (2004)

Dear Heather is another partial course correction sonically following on from Ten New Songs, but it's hampered by Cohen's enduring, inexplicable love of synth bass as well as the fact that the songs date from all over the place, going as 25 years back, denying it cohesion. Cohen's investment in these songs is unwavering, but their quality is not, and there's just not a lot here to make the listener keep coming back.

11. Ten New Songs (2001)

Ten New Songs was Cohen's first album in nine years, but you wouldn't know it from the production, a regression after The Future took a big step away from the trappings of his last few albums. Being sonically mired in 80s was one thing when it was the 80s, but in 2001 it was another. It also leans a bit too heavily on Sharon Robinson, who was the principal musician and took a decent share of the vocals. It's not the worst Leonard Cohen album, but it is the least Leonard Cohen album since Death of a Ladies Man. That said, it's compositionally strong, and Robinson's vocals blend in with Cohen's in a way that allows him to take them where he otherwise couldn't.

10. The Future (1992)

Cohen's only 90s album is a very human album, thanks in no small part to the aforementioned step away from the sterile sound of his last few. The Future lacks the tense energy of I'm Your Man, but Cohen still sounds as engaged as ever. "Democracy" is no "First We Take Manhattan", but it's a highlight here and a worthy entry in his canon. The album concludes strongly with "Always", an Irvin Berlin cover of all things that is given a relatively raw, bluesy treatment, and "Tacoma Trailer", a moody piano and organ instrumental. The Future is overlong, clocking in at an hour with nine songs, but then it did have to tide everyone over for almost a decade.

9. Recent Songs (1979)

Cohen followed his most obnoxious and overstuffed album Death of a Ladies Man with his most subtle up to that point. Recent Songs wisely returns to the minimalist folk Cohen was best at. It takes a few listens to fully reveal its charms; fortunately, people were willing to grant it that, and it gained and has maintained over time a reputation as one of Cohen's better albums.

8. Popular Problems (2014)

Popular Problems is Cohen's bluesiest album, but no genre was ever left completely intact when Cohen adopted it, and as evinced by the title of one of the best songs here, Popular Problems is almost like the blues. Cohen's coarse, seen-it-all voice links him spiritually to Son House, Skip James and any number of other blues greats. Like them, he barked immutable truths. Like them, the song was a vehicle for catharsis. But for them, the song was the answer, a temporary escape from an existential prison. For him, it was another line of inquiry in a search for a deeper meaning.

7. Old Ideas (2012)

Old Ideas kicked off an unexpected late career surge, the best run of three albums Cohen had recorded since the 70s. Forced out of retirement after being fleeced of his life savings, Cohen resumed touring. He soon ended up better off than he'd been to begin with, but he was having such a blast that he kept touring and was inspired to record again. Old Ideas is somehow quintessential Cohen without having an obvious antecedent within his catalogue. Despite being recorded during a burst of inspiration, the album is not a hurried one, nor does it try to obscure the fact that it was recorded by a 78 year-old with a long since desiccated voice. There's no genre bandwagon-hopping and no auto-tune. You can hear the weariness in his voice even when he's not making it explicit, such as he does on "Darkness": "I got no future/I know my days are few/the present's not that pleasant/just a lot of things to do/I thought my past would last me/but the darkness got that, too", directly referencing his financial woes. And yet Old Ideas is not the sound of Cohen surrendering. If he was ever going to do that, he would have already.

6. You Want It Darker (2016)

A week before the release of You Want It Darker, Cohen claimed he was ready to die. A few days after that, he retracted that statement and claimed he'd like to live forever. His death came just short of three weeks after the album's release. You Want it Darker is not the work of a man who wanted to die, but of one who accepted it as an inevitability. It's the peak of his late career renaissance that began with Old Ideas. Five years of playing three hours shows had taken its toll on Cohen physically, and he'd long since abandoned any pretense of actual singing. He outsourced that job as usual, this time to a choir - but his coarse, road-worn speaking voice represented him just fine. Unlike some his other albums such as Ten New Songs, in which he often got lost in the song, and not in a good way, here he's clearly commanding from the front. The album nods to Cohen's career as a whole, pairing the minimalism of his early work with his later excursions into genres such as gospel and blues. Everything just works here - even the synth bass, for the first time since I'm Your Man. One of Cohen's shortest albums, You Want It Darker is concise, pithy and a hell of a parting shot.

5. I'm Your Man (1988)

By far the better of Cohen's two 80s albums, I'm Your Man worked because it fully embraced the synthetic sound that subsumed Cohen on Various Positions. In an ingenious bit of sequencing, the comparatively modest "Take This Waltz", the sole respite of anyone still not on board with the new sound, gives way to "Jazz Police", in which the synths and programmed beats are at their most pronounced and should be insufferably obnoxious, but Cohen makes them work for him rather than the other way around.

4. Songs from a Room (1969)

Cohen's songwriting was as strong on this album as on his debut, especially "Bird on a Wire", a humble supplication that became one of his best known and most often covered songs, but its imperfections keep it from being that album's equal. On Songs of Leonard Cohen, he'd written exactly the songs he'd wanted to write, or so I can only assume, but he wrestled with how much adornment the songs needed and erred on the side of embellishment at the behest of his producer. Songs from a Room scaled it back, but unfortunately it also doubled down on the Jew's harp. I don't understand Cohen's fixation on that fucking annoying instrument, but it cost this album the #3 spot. At least he shelved it afterwards and only brought it back out a couple of times ever again. If only his love affair with synth bass had petered out so quickly. At least he never discovered steel drums.

3. New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974)

Cohen didn't have the voice to carry huge arrangements, and on his later albums the arrangements had to carry the voice, but New Skin finds the Goldilocks zone of instrumentation. It also finds him largely letting go of the clipped delivery of his earlier albums; on the one hand, this further exposes his limitations as a singer, but on the other, it makes New Skin an exuberant album by Cohen's standards. It's less bleak lyrically as well, and his sense of humour especially comes to the fore on "A Singer Must Die", in which he gives the finger to his critics who call him out for every perceived misstep, sort of like what I'm doing right now.

2. Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Songs of Leonard Cohen was the first Leonard Cohen album I heard. I was aware that he was held in high esteem as a lyricist and that he was a poet and novelist before he started writing songs. I was familiar with some of his lyrics without knowing all of the songs attached to them, and the first thing that struck me was his gift for melody and his ability, much like Bob Dylan, to create arresting songs from nothing but his voice and an acoustic guitar. There are instruments besides guitar here, a point of contention between Cohen and producer John Simon, and sometimes they fill spaces that were better left unfilled.  Although it's part of why Cohen is often thought of as a soundtrack to suicide, Songs of Leonard Cohen is nowhere near as bleak as he would get, but it certainly has more than a patina of dark introspection. Cohen captures love in various states of being - unrequited, platonic, in decline - anything but in bloom.

1. Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

Songs of Love and Hate is peak Leonard Cohen. It exemplifies why his lyrics are often thought of as depressing, but it's also the scene of the confluence of his unique outlook and the experience he gained from his first two albums, both their triumphs and their failures. I'd make separate blog entries for commentary on the lyrics of all eight songs here if I had the facility for such a task, but suffice it to say that you don't want to be a character in a Leonard Cohen song; there are few if any victories to be had.

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