For the month of January, I’m selecting some of the most memorable and influential songs of the 60’s. While they all hail from the same decade, these are some of my favorite songs of any era. They remind me that the 60’s were so much more than just Woodstock and psychedelic rock. It was a flourishing period for blues, folk, progressive and straight-ahead rock. #31DaysOf60sSongs
Songs of Leonard Cohen is one of the most mature, most impressive debut albums ever recorded. His storytelling and haunting vocals are beautiful, delightful gifts to discerning music fans. His melodies and instrumentation aren’t immediately accessible. They carry a bit of nuance and require a closer listen. These great qualities were all there from the very beginning. “Suzanne”, “So Long, Marianne” and “Sisters of Mercy” were probably the more well-known tracks from the album, but my favorite is the quiet, understated “Master Song”.
The song’s lyrics are an old mysterious story. Cohen himself was always vague about who the song was about, although there’s a thought out there that the song was about Cohen’s girlfriend Marianne, himself and the master - a spiritual guru that Marianne befriended. The lack of clarity is the strength of the song, as it eggs on the listener to keep listening for clues. Are these people real? Are they just fictitious characters? Why is the main character called a master? The mystery is shuffled about in Cohen’s classical guitar riff and a series of strings and Middle Eastern instruments. The quiet strength of “Master Song” is that each verse reads like a chapter in a book that you simply can’t put down.
“He was starving in some deep mystery like a man who is sure what is true.”