Songwriting

Cohen is perhaps best known and most lauded as a songwriter, yet when he began to write songs he had no formal musical training, and he could not read music. His career in music began with Judy Collins recording his songs, and it was revived several times by the success of later covers of them. Yet songwriting never came easily to Cohen, who often worked for years on songs, sometimes continuing even after he recorded them. Of “Hallelujah” he has said that he wrote maybe eighty verses before he felt that the song was finished, but he continued to tinker with it after the initial recording. Cohen reports that before he can discard a verse, “I have to write it. I have to work on it, and I have to polish it and bring it to as close to finished as I can.” This seems both a commitment to craft and something verging on obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it distinguishes Cohen from many other successful songwriters, who often say they toss off great lyrics in a few minutes.