The Essental Collection manages to do the not inconsiderable job of charting the career of what many consider to be one of the best songwriters in the English language. Cohen can easily compete with and when it comes to pure poetic power. Still, remarkably, he started out as a prose writer before becoming a record artist in the early 1960s. On his first albums, all of them amply represented, he
… accompanies himself on his Spanish guitar. His songs are dark, but romantic, and are based on folk song structures. Towards the end of the 1970s he expanded his musical and lyrical palette, as the songs chosen on this compilation clearly show. In the late 1980s, at a time when many of his peers are long in retirement, Cohen experienced a rebirth with the bitter songs and sparse electronic accompaniment of , the album best represented on this compilation. He always remained a man who could not be pinned down to the spirit of the times. Whether it concerns the hippie period or the singer / songwriter explosion of the seventies, Cohen always had his own vision and therefore always remained credible. Anyone interested in serious twentieth-century songwriting can indulge in The Essential Leonard Cohen Collection.more
