# Under what genre is Leonard Cohen's music best classified?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-what-genre-is-leonard-cohens-music-best-classified/821063>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 9, 2018, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-what-genre-is-leonard-cohens-music-best-classified/821063 "2018-09-09T20:29:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![BoogieStik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ec9cab/32.png) [@BoogieStik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoogieStik)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-what-genre-is-leonard-cohens-music-best-classified/821063/21 "2019-01-24T19:26:16Z")

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> [@Gatopescado](#):
>
> Canadian.

“Jewish Canadian” would be even more specific, but still doesn’t really peg his music.

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**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-what-genre-is-leonard-cohens-music-best-classified/821063/22 "2019-01-24T19:27:16Z")

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> [@Nava](#):
>
> In Spain he’s called a _poeta urbano_… city poet. Dylan and our Joaquín Sabina get the same classification. Their individual songs may fall into different slots (Sabina even wrote at least one ranchera), but the kind of subject matter is consistent throughout. In their case, the classification is based more on the lyrics than the music.

I like this.

> [@BoogieStik](#):
>
> When I face this conundrum I assign the artist’s name as the genre, and did so with Cohen. Frank Zappa certainly required this treatment. It’s a sign of respect as well as a solution to the problem.

This too.

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**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-what-genre-is-leonard-cohens-music-best-classified/821063/23 "2019-01-24T20:21:27Z")

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I believe the term is “Adult contemporary.”

It’s a pretty vague genre, defined by Wikipedia as “a North American term used to describe a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, rhythm and blues, quiet storm, and rock influence.” That about covers it for Leonard Cohen, I’d say.

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