Leonard Cohen
The Complete Studio Albums Collection
Album · Pop · 2014
Leonard Cohen recorded 12 studio albums between 1967 and 2012, which means this collection contains nearly every officially released song in the Cohen catalog. (The 1973 live album Live Songs includes a few essentials unavailable elsewhere.) The evolution of Cohen’s talents is most interesting to hear. The plainspoken poet of his early work, who had already perfected a number of legendary compositions (“Suzanne,” “Bird On the Wire,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” “Chelsea Hotel #2”), leads to the criminally-underrated Death of a Ladies’ Man album with producer Phil Spector and the sober calm of Recent Songs and Various Positions where “Hallelujah” sat largely unnoticed by commercial audiences for decades. I’m Your Man represented an unexpected return to the public eye that led to the heightened profile Cohen has generally enjoyed ever since, with 2012’s Old Ideas finishing out the set.