Leonard Cohen, the master of melancholy, has died

2016 is a real nightmare! Now the songwriter, composer and lyricist Leonard Cohen has died at the age of 82 in his adopted home Los Angeles. The Canadian was one of the really, really great. His melancholy songs are classics. With his smoky voice, the black hat pulled low over his forehead and the aura of deepest melancholy that always surrounds him, Cohen was considered a phenomenon and legend. His lyrics about love, intoxication, grief and philosophy made him one of the most important poets in pop music - alongside Bob Dylan.

Colleagues and millions of fans around the world mourn the Canadian master of melancholy, death was announced. About three weeks ago, Cohen released his last album "You want it darker" and fans recognized a kind of testament in the dark songs, because the Canadian was already seriously ill at the time of the recording. In recent years, the musician has withdrawn more and more from the public eye to his modest apartment in Los Angeles. My health just didn't want to play along anymore. Cohen has now died at the age of 82, as his label Sony Music Canada announced on Friday night.

Leonard Cohen, the master of melancholy, has died

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1934 into a wealthy Jewish family. He learned to play the guitar as a child and soon had his first appearances in cafes and clubs. However, for a long time music was to remain a minor matter for him. Cohen wanted to write, but the income from writing was not enough to live on. "I didn't want to write to get paid. I wanted to be paid for what I write." So Cohen moved to New York in the late '60s and picked up music again - soon with great success. Albums like "Songs of Leonard Cohen" (1967), "Songs of Love and Hate" (1971) and "Death of a Ladies' Man" (1977) influenced whole generations of musicians, songs like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne», «Bird on the Wire», «First We Take Manhattan», «Hallelujah», Everybody Knows» and «Chelsea Hotel #2» have long been considered classics. Cohen's spiritual and melancholic songs deal with lost love and suffering, with a longing for death and the search for God, linguistically they are reminiscent of polished gems. "I can only admire people who write their songs in a café or in a taxi - I've never managed to do it."

Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows (Live in Dublin - edited)

Cohen had always kept his private life under wraps as much as possible. All that is known is that he has two children with the Swedish painter Suzanne Elrod and was temporarily in a relationship with the actress Rebecca De Mornay. In Los Angeles he lived with his daughter and granddaughter. "My reputation as a womanizer is a joke," he once said in an interview. "He made me laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I was alone." In old age, the singer-songwriter had returned after battling depression and disappearing into a Zen monastery for years. "When I talk about depression, I'm talking about clinical depression, which is the background of my whole life, a background of fear and anxiety, a feeling that nothing is going right, that happiness is not possible and all strategies are collapsing," said he once told the British ‹Guardian›. "I'm happy to say that this depression has slowly dissipated and has never come back into my life with the same force."

Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah (Live In London)

Also out of financial necessity, after his former manager had cheated him out of pension reserves worth millions, Cohen had returned to the stages of the world. In 2011 he even received the Spanish Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and in 2012 he even released the most successful album of his decades-long career with "Old Ideas". Most people will remember him as the singer with the smoky voice, surrounded by an aura of the deepest melancholy. Thank you Leonard Cohen for always writing what is true - and always knowing how to express the truth in a way that was part of the experience of the person hearing or reading your words. Thank you for the passionate intensity with which you expressed your innermost being so honestly in your beautiful and harrowing songs and lyrics. Thank you for your dedication to music. Thank you for the quiet nights, the reflection, the perspective, the truth and the sad smile. Rest in peace!

Leonard Cohen, Bird on the Wire, London, 15-09-2013