Every­body knows the war is over. Every­body knows the good guys lost.

Per­haps no one since Thomas Hardy has matched Leonard Cohen in the dogged per­sis­tence of lit­er­ary bleak­ness. Cohen’s entry into a Zen monastery in 1996 was a “response to a sense of despair that I’ve always had,” he said in an inter­view that year. Ten years lat­er, Cohen told Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, “I had a great sense of dis­or­der in my life of chaos, of depres­sion, of dis­tress. And I had no idea where this came from. And the pre­vail­ing psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic expla­na­tions at the time didn’t seem to address the things I felt.”

Only a hand­ful of peo­ple on the plan­et have expe­ri­enced the “life of chaos” Leonard Cohen lived as an acclaimed poet, nov­el­ist, singer, and one of the most beloved song­writ­ers of the last sev­er­al decades. But mil­lions iden­ti­fy with his emo­tion­al tur­moil. Cohen’s expres­sions of despair—and of rev­er­ence, defi­ance, love, hatred, and lust—speak across gen­er­a­tions, telling truths few of us con­fess but, just maybe, every­body knows. Cohen’s death last year brought his career back into focus. And despite the mourn­ful occa­sion for revis­it­ing his work, he may be just the song­writer many of us need right now.

The great themes in Cohen’s work come togeth­er in his most famous song, “Hal­lelu­jah,” which has, since he first record­ed it in 1984 to lit­tle notice, become “everybody’s ‘Hal­lelu­jah,’” writes Ash­ley Fet­ters at The Atlantic, in a suc­ces­sion of cov­ers and inter­pre­ta­tions from Jeff Buck­ley and Rufus Wain­wright to Shrek and The X Fac­tor. It is here that the depths of despair and heights of tran­scen­dence meet, the sex­u­al and the spir­i­tu­al reach an accord: “This world is full of con­flicts and full of things that can­not be rec­on­ciled,” Cohen has said of the song. “But there are moments when we can… rec­on­cile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hal­lelu­jah.’”

Every­body knows it’s a mess. But it often takes a Leonard Cohen to con­vince us that—at least sometimes—it’s a beau­ti­ful one. If you feel you need more Leonard Cohen in your life, we bring you the playlist above, a com­plete chrono­log­i­cal discog­ra­phy avail­able on Spo­ti­fy—from the sparse, haunt­ing folk melodies of Cohen’s first album, 1967’s The Songs of Leonard Cohen to last year’s grip­ping swan song, You Want It Dark­er. In-between the leg­endary debut and mas­ter­ful sum­ma­tion are sev­er­al live albums, the clas­sics Songs from a Room, Songs of Love and Hate, and oth­ers, as well as that odd 1988 album I’m Your Man, in which Cohen set his grim ironies and uni­ver­sal truths to the sounds of eight­ies synth-pop, inton­ing over slap bass and drum machine the indeli­ble, gen­tly mock­ing lyrics he co-wrote with fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Sharon Robin­son:

Every­body knows that the boat is leak­ing
Every­body knows that the cap­tain lied
Every­body got this bro­ken feel­ing
Like their father or their dog just died
Every­body talk­ing to their pock­ets
Every­body wants a box of choco­lates
And a long-stem rose
Every­body knows

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Say Good­bye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hal­lelu­jah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Oth­er Tracks

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

A 17-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Jour­ney Through Tom Petty’s Music: Stream the Songs That Became the Sound­tracks of Our Lives

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When the Nor­we­gian syn­th­pop band A‑ha record­ed “Take on Me” in 1984, the song did­n’t meet instant suc­cess. It took record­ing two dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the track, and releas­ing it three sep­a­rate times, before the song man­aged to climb the charts, peak­ing at #1 on the US Bill­board Hot 100 and #2 on the UK Sin­gles Chart.

Since then, the song has enjoyed a pret­ty fine after­life. It has clocked near­ly 500 mil­lion plays on YouTube. You’ll find it on count­less 1980s antholo­gies and playlists. And now you can watch an entire­ly new per­for­mance of the song, which has already gone viral on YouTube. Record­ed this past June in Nor­way, as part of an unplugged con­cert for MTV, this ver­sion is more sub­tle and melan­choly than the orig­i­nal. And, as many Youtube com­menters read­i­ly note, it’s rather beau­ti­ful.

Find more details about the per­for­mance on A‑ha’s web­site.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Image by AVRO and Becky Sul­li­van, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

As of this moment, you have 22 days left to stream a one-hour radio doc­u­men­tary host­ed by Flo­rence Welch (of Flo­rence + The Machine). It takes a close look at the mak­ing of David Bowie’s land­mark album Heroes, released 40 years ago. The doc­u­men­tary (stream­able here) explores “the per­son­al and musi­cal fac­tors that influ­enced the album’s writ­ing and record­ing in Berlin in 1977.” It also cov­ers,  accord­ing to the BBC, the fol­low­ing ground:

Flo­rence will fea­ture [archival mate­r­i­al] of the late David Bowie explain­ing why he chose to live and work in Berlin and the impact the city’s his­to­ry had on the mas­ter­piece he cre­at­ed. She’ll also meet the album’s pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti to get an insight to the unique record­ing tech­niques he employed to inter­pret Bowie’s cre­ative vision and how the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the famous Hansa Stu­dios, which are sit­u­at­ed in a huge for­mer cham­ber music con­cert hall, con­tributed to the album’s influ­en­tial sounds. Iggy Pop, who was liv­ing with Bowie in Berlin dur­ing the record­ing of the album, recalls how a bat­tle with drug addi­tion, bank­rupt­cy and a legal dis­pute with his ex wife for access to his son all pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion for the album’s lyrics and Bri­an Eno, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with David through­out the LP’s record­ing, explains the unique musi­cal struc­tures he and David employed to com­pose the inno­v­a­tive songs.

Berlin’s rad­i­cal cul­tur­al diver­si­ty had always fas­ci­nat­ed Bowie and Flo­rence will explain how the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live and work in the city dur­ing the tur­bu­lent polit­i­cal peri­od pri­or to the fall of ‘the Wall’ pro­vid­ed the per­fect aus­tere envi­ron­ment for David and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to exper­i­ment with music inspired by sev­er­al Ger­man tech­no bands of the 70’s, includ­ing Neu!, Kraftwerk and Can.

When you’re done lis­ten­ing, we’d strong­ly rec­om­mend watch­ing this won­der­ful video where Tony Vis­con­ti, the pro­duc­er of David Bowie’s 1977 album, takes you inside the LP’s mak­ing. Don’t miss it. It’s a gem.

via NME

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in a Com­ic Ani­ma­tion