Poet, novelist and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen began publishing books of poetry in the 1950s, and has been releasing records every few years since the 1960s.
On March 10, Cohen will be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
While his later musical works are important, perhaps none capture the darker parts of the human soul quite like his melodic, desperately melancholy first album, "The Songs of Leonard Cohen," released in 1968.
Cohen's moody baritone voice sings tales of love, loneliness, jealousy, isolation, sex and religion as it dances over the dark, rhythmic cadences.
But not every song is depressing. In the album opener (and one of his most known songs "Suzanne") Cohen sings, "And you want to travel with her/And you want to travel blind/And you know that you can trust her/For she's touched your perfect body with her mind."
In "So Long, Marianne," Cohen picks up the tempo with a lighter sound.
But lest the passive listener start to feel content, Cohen follows with "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," a song of a sweet love that's now leaving.
The album ends appropriately enough with "One of Us Cannot be Wrong," a song of Cohen's lover who ruined the minds and lives of men across the globe.
Cohen's album puts listeners on edge, not sure whether to weep, run away or fall soundlessly into the solitude of the mind.
I've put his record on many times, always ending up huddled in a chair, losing myself in his spinning somber world while sipping tea.
Still I go back time and time again, a slave of sorts to the endless, layered mystery of the hypnotic melodies.