There is a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in

This quote is from Leonard Cohen who's seventy seven today. Now the doyen of doom, Cohen's been making self pity an art form long before today's crop of kohl eyed, similarly inclined artists even existed. Bright Eyes, Elliott Smith, Bill Callahan the list of those in stylistic debt to the Canadian bard could stretch miles, yet let's honour the master today. The man who brought us 'Bird On A Wire', and who had such a nack of combining the spiritual with the sexual, the sacred and the sleazy- "you held on to me like I was a crucifix"- to cite but one well known example. Anyway, I'm not saying Cohen was the progenitor of emo. God no. His songs always seemed to grasp after the universal, the transcendent. They weren't limited in scope to the simple existential angst of the floppy haired brigade. His best songs were rapt, awe like celebrations of beauty. As in perhaps my favourite love song ever- 'Suzanne.'




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