‘I’m ready my Lord’: Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen dies aged 82

LEONARD COHEN has died just weeks after the release of his soulful, bare-boned new album ‘You want it darker’ to critical acclaim. 

Considered one of the most influential singers of all time, Cohen’s death marks the end of an era in the music world. His son Adam described his father as “the last of his kind”.

“he’s speaking about things that are meaningful to him at his particular rung in life — he will be leaving a giant void when he leaves us.”

Like David Bowie before him, Cohen seemed to know that his moment had come. The title track of his latest album, played on Radio 3 in Spain this morning, features the chorus:

“Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord”

The album itself is dominated by the theme of mortality and Cohen recently told the New Yorker: “I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.”

From his 1967 debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen, the Canadian was very much his own man, his poetry a different universe from the bombastic melodies of the Beatles and Stones, the lyrical activism of Dylan, the psychedelic thunder of The Doors. 

His music defied genre and Cohen continued to reinvent himself in different phases of his life, not in his identity as Bowie did, but as a man maturing, evolving, moving towards new planes of being over six decades of artistry. 

Truly the last of his kind.