Leonard Cohen
photo: gorupdebesanez · cc by-sa 3.0 ↗Leonard Cohen arrived at songwriting already a published poet and novelist, and his early folk records carry the density of someone who came to melody through language first. He drew on the folk tradition of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie as much as on the noir theatricality of Jacques Brel's chanson, fusing plainspoken folk chords with a novelist's eye for narrative. Songs like "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah" turned that combination into a body of work that reads as much as it sings.
enthusiast, ear-level: plainspoken folk melody put in service of politics and moral witness rather than personal romance — Cohen has said he had a deep affinity for Seeger's folk music growing up.
listen forPlay Seeger's gentle protest standard 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone' beside Cohen's 'The Partisan,' a Resistance-era song Cohen adapted into his own catalog of quiet moral seriousness.
enthusiast, ear-level: theatrical, novelistic chanson songwriting — a spoken-sung delivery building toward a devastating final image, a style critics trace directly to Brel's influence on Cohen.
listen forCompare the slow-burning dread of Brel's 'Ne me quitte pas' to Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat' — both are structured as a single letter-like address that escalates in intimacy and heartbreak toward the end.
enthusiast, ear-level: unadorned storytelling folk chords that let a plain melody carry weighty, almost biblical subject matter — Cohen cited an affinity for Guthrie's folk music alongside Seeger's.
listen forSet Guthrie's plainspoken populist anthem 'This Land Is Your Land' against Cohen's Old Testament-inflected 'Story of Isaac' — both use simple, singable folk structure to carry unusually heavy moral freight.