Famous Blue Raincoat Tops Ranking of Leonard Cohen's 20 Greatest Songs

By Marcus Bennett

Leonard Cohen's 1971 song "Famous Blue Raincoat" has been named the greatest song of his career in a new ranked countdown of 20 compositions spanning nearly five decades of work. "Hallelujah", perhaps his most famous recording, lands only at number five.

The ranking traces Cohen's catalogue from 1967's debut-era standards to "You Want It Darker", released less than three weeks before his death in 2016. It argues there is no definitive "best" Cohen song. "There's no head-and-shoulders 'best' song, merely personal favouritism," the compiler writes, while conceding that reducing the oeuvre to 20 songs is "a thankless task".

"Famous Blue Raincoat" depicts a love triangle as a letter addressed to the other man. The ranking praises its "impossibly beautiful song", its "atmosphere of shadowy small-hours reflection" and one of his loveliest melodies — later borrowed, it notes, by Leo Sayer's "When I Need You".

Which songs fill the top five?

"Suzanne" (1968) takes second place. The countdown calls it a song "so good, it immediately becomes a standard", covered by Nina Simone, Neil Diamond, Roberta Flack and Aretha Franklin. "Bird on the Wire" (1969) ranks third, described as sounding "utterly, authentically defeated, like one long sigh". Kris Kristofferson said he wanted its opening lines on his gravestone, and Marianne Ihlen, Cohen's then girlfriend, coaxed it out of him during a depression.

"So Long, Marianne" (1968) sits fourth, with the ranking detecting the ghost of Cohen's abandoned Nashville ambitions in its "beautiful admission of guilt". "Hallelujah" completes the top five. Its journey — from an album Cohen's US label refused to release to his signature song, via John Cale's cover on the Shrek soundtrack — is called "fascinating". Cohen himself later proposed a moratorium on its use in films.

What does the list reveal about Cohen's late career?

The countdown rehabilitates the synth era that divides fans. "I'm Your Man", "Tower of Song" and "Everybody Knows" — all from 1988 — place sixth, eighth and twelfth, even though collaborator Anjani Thomas later voiced misgivings about the production. "Anthem" (1992), home to the most-quoted Cohen lyric — "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" — ranks seventh. Cohen suggested the song represented "everything my whole work and life had gathered around".

The late works score heavily too. "You Want It Darker" (2016) takes fourteenth place. Released under three weeks before his death, it stands with Warren Zevon's The Wind and Queen's Innuendo as a facing-down of mortality: "I'm ready, my Lord." Almost Like the Blues, from Popular Problems — issued the day before his 80th birthday — reaches seventeenth, noted for its jab at Richard Dawkins and its tally of "all my bad reviews".

Lower reaches of the list hold their own stories. Nick Cave called "Avalanche" (1971) one of "the essential pillars that hold up the structure of my artistic world". "Dance Me to the End of Love" (1984) draws on the Lagerkapellen, the concentration camp orchestras. "The Future" (1992), written after the Los Angeles riots — "I've seen the future, baby, and it's murder" — is judged grimly prophetic 34 years on.

Even the much-maligned Death of a Ladies' Man (1977), recorded with Phil Spector and called "a catastrophe" by Cohen, supplies two entries: "Memories" and the title track.

For listeners, the ranking works as both a starting point and a provocation — one that guarantees argument over what the umpteen neglected songs might have deserved.