Ten years after Leonard Cohen died in Los Angeles on 7 November 2016, the Canadian poet, novelist and singer-songwriter is still everywhere people look for honesty in a song. Vanity Fair Italia marked the anniversary with a guided listen through ten of his most memorable tracks, from the early Montréal ballads to the farewell of You Want It Darker. Elsewhere, The Guardian, The Conversation and The Globe and Mail have been ranking, re-reading and staging tributes to the same body of work. The point is not nostalgia for its own sake; it is how quietly those songs still open a door.
From Hydra to Hallelujah
Cohen came late to recording. He was already a published poet and novelist when Songs of Leonard Cohen appeared in 1967, carrying Suzanne and So Long, Marianne — songs shaped by Montréal harbour walks and the years on the Greek island of Hydra with Marianne Ihlen. Later came the wounded letter of Famous Blue Raincoat, the Chelsea Hotel vignette, and the long-laboured Hallelujah on Various Positions (1984), which Columbia declined to release in the United States at the time. John Cale and Jeff Buckley helped carry it into the wider world; Cohen himself once suggested a pause on its film use. The song survived ubiquity because the sacred and the carnal sit side by side without apology.
Cracks, candles and a final greeting
Anthem, from The Future (1992), still travels on a single image: there is a crack in everything — that is how the light gets in. You Want It Darker, released weeks before his death in 2016, faces mortality with the same unflinching courtesy. Tribute concerts and family tours continue into 2026 and 2027, including Adam Cohen’s archival evenings and staged readings in Canada. What endures is less the legend than the craft: a deep voice, spare arrangements, and lines that treat love, doubt and faith as one conversation.
That same appetite for pieces that feel personal rather than loud sits well with quiet evening jewellery — a simple necklace, a sculptural pair of earrings, a meaningful ring or a slim bracelet from our jewellery edit — the kind of detail you notice when the room goes still.
Sources: Vanity Fair Italia, “Leonard Cohen, un decennio dopo” (Maurizio Di Fazio, 7 November 2026); The Guardian, “Leonard Cohen’s greatest songs – ranked!” (22 October 2026); The Conversation, “10 years after Leonard Cohen’s passing…” (6 November 2026); The Globe and Mail on tenth-anniversary tributes.
