9. Leonard CohenTen New Songs
My love of Leonard Cohen goes back to when I when I was in elementary school. We went to Dubai to buy a good stereo, this new Technics system, to bring back to listen to music. But there wasn’t so much music there to buy. So my dad goes to Tehran and comes back with Pink Floyd and Leonard Cohen – it was one of the better Leonard Cohen 90s releases. It starts with ‘Everybody Knows’, as a kid I heard that really deep voice, the beat and cheesy synth, I found it really funny. I didn’t understand a word, but I loved it.
The album I’ve chosen I got when it came out. I was in high school and I had this Discman and it didn’t come out of my Discman for a long time. It was the first time that I understood the words, and it was the poetry that spoke to me. It’s nothing special in a musical sense for me, but it’s a very special thing personally – it has been played in every emotionally hard situation in my life. When he died I cried my eyes out, and one of my friends said, I heard Leonard Cohen died, and the only thing I know about this guy is that you were shoving your headphones onto our heads when we were in school and saying, ‘Listen to this! It’s perfect’.
