Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen is a great songwriter and brilliant lyricist who is not what you would call "mainstream". The lyrics and themes for his songs are a probably a little too real and "dark" to most people for him to have ever had a commercial career. Embarking in the late 60's as a recording artist after I would assume starving as a poet, he was a sort of sweet voiced singer in the folk music singer/songwriter vein who now sounds like he has smoked too many cigarettes and unfortunately has made some badly produced records since the late 80's relying on too many synthesizers, drum machines and back up female singers. But the songs are really, really good. I Can't Forget is off Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man which is his "comeback" record from 1988. He spent a good deal of the 90's living at the Zen Center on Mount Baldy near Los Angeles as a Zen monk named Jikan. Something all aging pop musicians do on a regular basis, right?

His stature among his fellow musicians is immense and there are a couple of tribute albums out includng one called I'm Your Fan with R.E.M., The Pixies (doing a cover of I Can't Forget), Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and many others that is fun and most of the tracks on it are quite good. Many of you are probably familiar with the brilliant performance of Leonard's song called Hallelujah on Jeff Buckley's album Grace or perhaps the Concrete Blonde version of Everybody Knows which is good also.

Buy it here.