His later tour stuff is great as another commented mentioned, but I'd say maybe give 'I'm Your Man' a whirl (it has Everybody Knows and Take This Waltz). If you don't like it then you probably won't like LC in general (although you maybe could still like Hallelujah as that one has sort of taken over the mainstream consciousness. Definitely a great song, and I'm in the minority probably being that I dislike most of the Hallelujah "covers", preferring the LC original).
Songs from a Room from 1990 is also pretty great, with one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, The Partisan.
His early stuff is a little different, mostly due to his voice being different tonally and being much younger (just his later stuff with the gruff voice comes off kind of different, but stylistically his music has stayed pretty consistent-- he has explored and incorporated world music throughout his career for instance), but you can't go wrong with his first album from 1967, with classics like Suzanne and So Long, Marianne.
Suzanne is quintessential young Cohen: written as poetry before he became a singer, put to simple but enjoyable music, personal but relatable in its theme and quite evocative of the 60s.
I think the best way to understand Cohen is that he is a legitimate poetry writer who realised early on that his voice and good look could earn him more money as a singer. He is in a lot of way a better Dylan except giving him the Nobel would have been less insulting to Roth.
I guess it is just a typo, but Songs from a Room is from 1969. For me his first three albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate made a kind of trilogy. I've always loved these ones, while his other albums more grown on me over time.
You know I thought it was a very early one, but I looked it up on Google and it said 1990 so I just blindly accepted it. Must have been a reference to a reissue perhaps..
Wow! What a talented young man, and incredible rendition. And the piano improvisation toward the end was excellent and unexpected. This made my day, thank you.
Live in London is a great album to atart with - he was in his seventies, doing a multi-year world tour, and still sounding absolutely at the top of his game.
I'm your Man, like some of his other 80s albums, can be a bit synth-heavy - which may be surprising if you've only heard Suzanne. I'd recommend it, although I dislike the final track (Jazz Police).
His final album, You Want it Darker is elegiac and sadly lovely. Probably not the place to start though.
In my experience, the best way to discover Leonard Cohen's music is while driving back from a high school club convention in 1996, and the cool teacher starts playing New Skin for the Old Ceremony on cassette. And you're like: "this isn't Nirvana, what is it?!"
BUT, if you can't swing that, there's a great Best Of album that is 100% bangers. Slow, dark, introspective bangers.
I'd start with The Future (1992), I'm Your Man (1988), and Ten New Songs (2001). Those are, IMO, his most accessible and there's a very good chance you already know a few of those songs and haven't realized you know those songs. (e.g., "Everybody Knows" from I'm Your Man has been in a few movies, as have "The Future", and "Waiting for a Miracle" from The Future.)
Note that there's a really stark difference in his voice starting in the mid-80s. His early stuff doesn't sound quite right to me because I equate Leonard Cohen with his voice in the later albums.
Not the poster you asked but I'd say.. Start at or near the beginning. Later stuff has some gnarly sounding synths and arrangements that might not sound all that palatable to the modern ear (very 80s).
For me I first heard him via his album "Songs of Love and Hate". I found it in my dads record collection after a funeral of a close family member.
> synths and arrangements that might not sound all that palatable to the modern ear
Are you referring to I'm Your Man? Because I'd say that it's his single most accessible collection of songs, and that his adoption of modern instrumentation was a genius move. The backing track for "First We Take Manhattan" sounds like New Order!
It's not modern instrumentation. It's a Technics arranger keyboard like the kind you might have heard in an airport smoking lounge. He started using them because they allowed him to build an arrangement without the help of other musicians. They've always sounded chintzy to me but they worked for him because of the cabaret nature of his songs.
His Technics is used in places, such as "Tower of Song". But "First We Take Manhattan" was recorded using a Synclavier, which at the time was as cutting-edge as you could get.
Interesting. I didn't know that about the Synclavier. I still think the production in his later stuff will sound very quaint to anyone encountering it for the first time.
He was a really dedicated user of those Technics machines. He and Wesley Willis, lol.
Pretty sure I first found out about Cohen (and Pixies!) via Pump Up The Volume (1990). Fantastic movie. I thought the Concrete Blonde Everybody Knows cover was good, but then I dug and found the real thing and was blown away..
FWIW I think they're comparable, but just very different. Johnette Napolitano's voice is fantastic, and she really gets to stretch out on "Everybody Knows". As good as the recorded version is, hearing Concrete Blonde do it live was amazing. I saw them in 1993 in St. Louis and that show is still in my top 10 concerts, ever.
But his albums, especially the early ones, are worth getting because of the extraordinary standard of both songwriting and production (by Bob Johnston).
Live in London is a great representation of how he sounded toward the end of his touring career, and I think it is a great place to start. IMO, there's not a bad track on the album.
The first thing I listened to from him was his very last album, "You Want it Darker", released less than a month before he passed. I don't know whether it's the best way to start, but I absolutely love the album, and it made a huge impact on me. It's one of the most emotional sets of music I've ever heard. You can hear his voice straining to its limits, he's putting everything he's got into it.
I don't think it matters where you start, but start with the expectation that a lot of the music is really more spoken word poetry set to music, the emphasis is on the lyrics and their layered metaphor, and so the music strongly benefits from repeated listening.
There's stuff you won't unpack until you've listened to a song dozens of times.
I grew up with Leonard's music in the 90s, but it was only after his death that I learned about his non-musical poetry through another favorite of mine - the Swedish group "First Aid Kit". They did an absolutely breathtaking tribute show to honor their idol, where they arranged his music and poetry with a few of their friends:
https://youtu.be/of_hZoVvqaM
Here's a Youtube video ("A Guide to Leonard Cohen") that came out right after he died and provides a brief bio and discusses some of his work: https://youtu.be/rLQD_kugBBM
I don't know about the best way to discover him, but nobody yet mentioned "Famous blue raincoat" nor "Dance me to the end of love" and I just couldn't let them go unnoticed. "Take this waltz" and "Hallelujah" are also great.
Maybe one of his later in life live performance albums (Live in Dublin or Live in London)would be a good place to start, if you don’t mind spending an hour of audio listening. He’s personable, performs his greatest hits, and feels like a man demonstrating his life’s work.
