As a poet, I have long been interested in singing and listening to singers and observing the often fraught and frayed relationship between music and words. In this series of posts eulogizing the vocal styles that have especially moved and influenced me over the years (arranged in no particular order of merit), I attempt to explore the concept of ‘voice’ in the poetry of popular music. My views, as always, are entirely subjective, and friendly feedback is, as always, warmly invited……
Leonard Cohen
I used to say of Leonard Cohen that he can’t sing, he can’t write poetry, he can’t play any musical instrument very well… and yet, when he brings all of these shortcomings together in equal measure, he inevitably comes up with something magically and universally enchanting. Cohen’s voice has attained a surprising maturity with age… It is not that he has trained or honed it… He is way too old and way too famous for that, and it wouldn’t have helped him anyway. Like some Old Testament patriarch, he always knew where he was headed. It just happened. His voice has now descended into the depths—both physically and figuratively—where the difference between song and recitation, enchantment and law-giving, blurs into something that transcends both. “The Darkness” from his most recent album, while not his best piece by far, epitomizes this vocal trend. An eighty-something guy still awes us and sparks us to life with a seemingly sempiternal frisson of cool…