Sony is releasing a new compilation of great songs by Montreal poet Leonard Cohen, which opens with a live version of Hallelujahcaptured at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008. This disc is released on Friday, one week before the premiere of the documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Songexpected on June 12 at the Tribeca festival.
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“The film explores the singer-songwriter’s legacy in depth, all through the prism of the international and unmissable anthem that is his Hallelujah, the statement said. The project, whose production was approved by Leonard Cohen just before his 80e anniversary in 2014, draws from a rich pool of unpublished archival material from the Cohen Family Trust, including the artist’s diaries, diaries and photographs, performance footage, audio recordings and extremely rare interviews . »
This is obviously not the first compilation of Cohen’s iconic tracks to be released. The Best Of Leonard Cohenreleased in 1975, certainly contributed a lot to introducing his first great songs to an audience that had not followed his debut. Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song however, has the particularity of betting on the second part of his career: 10 of the 17 titles are taken from his albums published from I’m Your Manin 1988.
The album thus relies on titles like I’m Your Man, The Future, In My Secret Life, Come Healing, You Want It Darker. The only old songs found there are Susanna, Bird On the Wire, Famous Blue Raincoat, Chelsea Hotel #2, Who By Fire and of course Hallelujah.
Leonard Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934 and died in 2016 at age 82. He had always kept a base in town, near Portugal Park, even though he spent most of his life in Los Angeles. His memory is honored by two murals: one on Crescent Street, which can be seen from the Mont-Royal lookout, the other on Saint-Laurent Boulevard at Napoleon Street.