Heartbreak, hope and human imperfection: Leonard Cohen’s greatest songs – ranked! — SkimNews
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- Famous Blue Raincoat ranks No. 1 in a 20-song survey spanning 1968-2016, praised for its letter-like account of a love triangle and shadowy melody; the compiler concedes there is no definitive “best” and that “umpteen” deserving songs were omitted.
- Hallelujah went from being refused by Cohen’s US record label to becoming his most famous song, with John Cale’s cover reaching the Shrek soundtrack; Cohen later proposed a moratorium on its use in films, but it retained its emotional power.
- You Want It Darker was released less than three weeks before Cohen’s death, with its title track declaring “I’m ready, my Lord” and turning faith into a complex, thorny examination.
- The Future transformed the early-1990s upheavals, especially the Los Angeles riots, into “I’ve seen the future, baby, and it’s murder”; 34 years later, its upbeat soft-rock accompaniment still intensifies the apocalyptic unease.
- First We Take Manhattan makes a divisive, synth-heavy arrangement part of its brooding menace, despite longtime collaborator Anjani Thomas’s later misgivings about the sound.
- Bird on the Wire was coaxed out of a depressed Cohen by girlfriend Marianne Ihlen, while Kris Kristofferson said he wanted its opening lines on his gravestone.
- Anthem presents hope through “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”; Cohen later described it as representing everything his work and life had gathered around.
Why it matters: The list’s hard cap of 20 songs, despite “umpteen” deserving omissions, makes this personal curation rather than settled canon. Cohen’s audience gains a cross-era route through work that keeps regret, aging and fear in productive tension with hope, while the admitted exclusions preserve both his music’s roughness and the ranking’s subjectivity.
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