One of the most striking things about Leonard Cohen’s death came when you re-read the interviews with him.
Here was a man, an artist, a songwriter, a poet and a performer who had something to say and was, thankfully, given the road over the course of his career to say it.
From that stunning David Remnick profile which appeared in the New Yorker magazine in October, to encounters with journalists from all stages of his life, Cohen when discussing his life and work always delivered erudite insights and outsights.
Cohen had great wisdon, but it’s also worth noting that Cohen received the space and time to articulate these views. He was someone who warranted and commanded the seriousness he was given. When he spoke about life, death, love, loss, sadness, ennui and the small triumphs of the everyday – we took it all in because it was worth taking in.
Folks like Cohen are rarities, which is why we mourn their loss. You could, after all, give every artist the same sort of yardage as Cohen received, but you wouldn’t receive the same quantity of wisdom in return.
There may be a crack in everything, but sometimes it’s not worth talking about what’s coming in.
Reading those interviews with Cohen one more time is a powerful reminder that music journalism itself has changed utterly in recent times.
Insipid questions
What now passes for this business bears little resemblance to what it was when Cohen headed up to Mount Baldy in search of Zen, and you have to wonder if this change, like many such changes, is really for the better.
The quest for width and depth has gone. Sure, you still get lengthy, insightful interviews and features in publications such as this one and elsewhere, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.
The rule now involves some class of insipid questions for a clickbait feature or a lowest-common-denominator listicle constructed to win the next hour on social media.
It’s depressing in the extreme to see outlets writing up news stories about an act releasing an image of their new album sleeve because that’s what they think their readers want to see.
There are many reasons for this change in the tenor of the trade. A lot has to do with disruption in the media business an dthe need to do more with less – which is common in every sector.
Many will also nod sadly in response to the recent piece by journalist Neil Kulkarni about the manner in which the notion of copy approval now infects the most innocuous of pieces.
Narrow parameters
The intrusion of celebrity into the equation is another problem.
The overt cosiness between the interviewer and interviewee is also worth citing. Many journalists want to be liked by the people they’re supposed to cover and thus they have chats and chinwags rather than conversations and interviews.
A chat is something you have with your pal or next-door neighbour about what you’re doing at the weekend and is not designed to be a serious exchange. And the person you’re interviewing is not supposed to be your buddy either.
That’s not to say that there has to be an attritional or combative tone to every interview, as much as that might be fun for a while.
However, the manner in which music coverage has swapped seriousness for trivia means there’s less and less time for acts who don’t adhere to some very narrow parameters.
If Leonard Cohen was starting out today, how do you think he’d fare in this brave new world of clickbait and listicles?
