Leonard Cohen refused to release song he wrote which was too ‘self-indulgent’

Leonard Cohen once refused to release a song as he found it to be too “self-indulgent”.

The veteran songwriter behind Hallelujah, Tower of Song, and Dance Me to the End of Love had a high bar for his own work, often spending years on one song. Though the song he thought was too “self-indulgent” would eventually be released, the legendary musician believed it didn’t deserve to see the light of day. Going Home would feature on Cohen‘s 2012 album, Old Ideas, after much prodding from producer Patrick Leonard. Over time, Cohen’s collaborator managed to convince him there was a song worth hearing in Going Home, and so it was released. Cohen would speak of the prodding and suggested it was thanks to Patrick Leonard that the song saw the light of day.

He said: “Pat said, ‘This would make a great song’. I said, ‘Are you mad?! This song is a piece of self-indulgent introspective writing that doesn’t deserve to see the light of day.’ Under his prodding, however, I finally began to see there might be a song there.”

It would mark Cohen’s penultimate album, with You Want It Darker releasing four years after Old Ideas. Cohen says his cancer diagnosis gave him a clarity to his writing he had not experienced since his early years, when the writer fasted, barely slept, and spent most of the day on the Greek Island of Hydra writing songs.

Cohen would say “less distractions” than usual, given his diagnosis, helped him piece together a worthy final album. Speaking to The New Yorker’s David Remnick just months before his death, Cohen would suggest there was a “tremendous blessing” to how he worked in the darker, final months.

He said: “In a certain sense, this particular predicament is filled with many less distractions than other periods of my life and actually enables me to work with a little more concentration and continuity. The only thing that mitigates against full production is just the condition of my body. There are times I just have to lie down.

“Sometimes, it’s just like ‘you’re losing too much weight now, man.’ You’re dying, but you don’t have to cooperate so enthusiastically with the process. It’s very compassionate at this stage. I mean more than any time in my life, I don’t have that voice in my head saying ‘you’re fucking up!’ That’s a tremendous blessing, really. I took care of business and I’m ready to die.”

Cohen would go on to express his relief at getting You Want It Darker over the line, calling it a chance to put his house in order. He said: “At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order.

“It’s a cliché, but it’s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.”