It was 1971. Leonard Cohen was living in a room at the Chelsea Hotel, or maybe he was hiding out in Hydra, or perhaps he was just stuck in the corridors of his own skull. He was miserable. He felt like a fraud. While the rest of the world was experimenting with psychedelic sprawl and stadium rock, Cohen went into a studio in Nashville and recorded a masterpiece of claustrophobia.
He called it Songs of Love and Hate.
Honestly, the title is a bit of a lie. It isn't a 50/50 split. It’s mostly hate, or at least the kind of love that feels like a heavy coat you can’t take off in a heatwave. It’s an album that sounds like a late-night confession you’d regret the next morning if it weren't so damn poetic. If you’ve ever felt like your heart was a bruised organ, this record is your medical chart.
The Raw Nerve of Songs of Love and Hate
People usually think of Leonard Cohen as the "Hallelujah" guy. They think of the velvet-voiced elder statesman in the fedora. But in 1971, he was a jagged edge. Songs of Love and Hate is his third studio album, and it’s arguably the most intense thing he ever put to tape. Bob Johnston, who produced Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, sat behind the glass for these sessions. Johnston knew how to capture lightning, but here, he captured a slow-motion car crash of the soul.
The album opens with "Avalanche." It’s terrifying.
The guitar work is a frantic, flamenco-inspired thrumming. Cohen’s voice isn't singing; it’s growling from the bottom of a well. When he says, "I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul," he isn't being metaphorical in that airy-fairy way folk singers usually are. He sounds buried. He sounds like he’s actually gasping for air under the weight of his own brilliance and his own failures.
It’s a song about the parasitic nature of being an artist. You take your pain, you dress it up, and you sell it. It’s gross. He knows it.
What Most People Get Wrong About the "Depression" Label
Critics love to call this "music to slit your wrists to." That’s such a lazy take. It’s actually quite boring to just call it depressing. Cohen himself used to joke about how he was the "Godfather of Gloom," but there’s a massive amount of humor in these tracks if you’re looking for it.
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Take "Dress Rehearsal Rag." It’s a song about a man considering suicide while looking in a mirror. Sounds grim, right? But the detail is so absurd, so hyper-specific, that it borders on the grotesque comedy of a Beckett play. He talks about "that silver-plated spoon" and the "clown" in the mirror. It’s a song about the vanity of despair. Cohen is mocking himself as much as he is mourning.
That’s the secret. The album isn't about being sad; it’s about the performance of being human.
The Famous Blue Raincoat and the New York Ghost
If there is one song that defines the legacy of Songs of Love and Hate, it’s "Famous Blue Raincoat."
Most songs about love triangles are loud. They involve screaming or betrayal or big, dramatic choruses. This one is a letter. It starts at four in the morning. It’s a quiet, devastating note to a man who stole the narrator’s wife—or maybe he didn't steal her, maybe he just liberated her.
"And what can I tell you my brother, my killer? What can I possibly say?"
The lyrics reference a "Lili Marlene" and a "lock of your hair." It feels private. It feels like we are reading something we shouldn't. Cohen actually had a blue raincoat. It was a Burberry he bought in London in 1959. He told the BBC later that he wore it until it fell apart, and someone actually stole it from his sister’s loft in New York. The fact that the raincoat was a real, physical object makes the song’s ghostly atmosphere even heavier.
It’s a song about forgiveness, which is the most difficult part of hate. You’ve got this guy who "went to the station to meet every train," a man who lived on the edge, and the narrator is just... tired.
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The Backing Vocals: The Army of Angels
One of the most distinct parts of the record is the "Johnston chorale." Johnston brought in a group of female backup singers. In any other context, they would sound soulful or uplifting. Here, they sound like Sirens.
In "Joan of Arc," the back-and-forth between Cohen (playing the Fire) and the singers (playing Joan) creates a haunting, cinematic tension. It’s a love song between a woman and the flames that are consuming her. It’s romantic. It’s horrific. It’s exactly why Songs of Love and Hate stands alone in his discography. The voices don't comfort him; they haunt him. They are the "love" part of the title, perhaps, but it’s a love that burns.
Why the Production Still Sounds Modern
Most albums from 1971 sound like 1971. You can hear the shag carpet and the incense. But Songs of Love and Hate has this weird, timeless sterility.
- The acoustic guitar is mixed so close you can hear the callouses on the fingers.
- The bass is a deep, thudding heartbeat.
- There is massive amounts of "air" in the recording—silence that feels heavy.
If you listen to modern "sad girl" indie or the stripped-back folk of artists like Phoebe Bridgers or even the darker turns of Nick Cave, you can hear the DNA of this record. Nick Cave actually covered "Avalanche" on the first Bad Seeds album. He got it. He understood that this wasn't folk music. It was high-stakes emotional warfare.
The tracks weren't over-produced. They were carved out of stone.
The Mystery of "Diamonds in the Mine"
If you want to hear Cohen truly unravel, listen to "Diamonds in the Mine."
It’s a reggae-adjacent, twisted nursery rhyme where he sounds like he’s losing his mind. His voice cracks. He yells. He sneers about "the woman in the cardboard mask." It’s a sharp departure from the baritone croon he became famous for later.
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This is the "Hate" portion of the program.
It’s a bitter, cynical look at a world where "there are no letters in the mailbox" and "the nurseries are full of ghosts." It’s essentially a protest song against existence itself. It’s messy. It’s the least "perfect" song on the album, and that’s why it’s vital. It breaks the tension. Without it, the album might be too beautiful to be real. "Diamonds in the Mine" reminds you that the person making this music is angry.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Listener
You can't just put this album on while you’re doing the dishes. It’ll ruin your day, or at least your focus. To actually appreciate what Cohen did here, you need to approach it like a piece of literature.
- Listen in total isolation. This is not a social record. Put on headphones, turn off the lights, and let the first three minutes of "Avalanche" dictate your heart rate.
- Read the lyrics separately. Cohen was a poet and novelist long before he was a singer. The lyrics to "Last Year’s Man" function as a short story. Notice how he uses religious imagery—the sky, the Bethlehem star, the Joan of Arc fire—not to preach, but to ground these tiny, human feelings in something cosmic.
- Compare it to Songs from a Room. His previous album was sparse, but it wasn't this aggressive. Seeing the transition from "Bird on the Wire" to "Avalanche" shows an artist who stopped trying to be liked and started trying to be honest.
- Trace the influence. If you like the moody atmosphere of Songs of Love and Hate, check out Scott Walker’s Scott 4 or Nico’s The Marble Index. These are the cornerstones of "The Dark Folk" movement that never really had a name but influenced everyone from Joy Division to Lana Del Rey.
The Final Verdict on a 1971 Classic
Songs of Love and Hate isn't a comfortable listen. It’s a record that demands you acknowledge the parts of yourself you usually try to hide—the jealousy, the exhaustion, the weirdly specific memories of old coats.
It remains a pivotal moment in music history because it proved that "folk" music didn't have to be about the community or the revolution. It could be about the interior of a hotel room. It could be about the "thin green candle" and the way a person’s shadow looks on a wall.
Cohen didn't give us answers. He just gave us the documents of his own struggle. In a world that’s constantly trying to sell us "wellness" and "positivity," there is something deeply healing about an album that admits, quite loudly, that sometimes everything just hurts.
If you’re looking to dive deeper into Cohen’s discography, your next move is to skip the "Best Of" compilations and head straight for New Skin for the Old Ceremony. It carries the same bite but adds a strange, orchestral layer that feels like the logical conclusion to the breakdown he started on this record.
Go find a copy on vinyl if you can. The hiss of the needle in the quiet moments of "Famous Blue Raincoat" is part of the experience. It makes the ghost feel like he’s in the room with you.