All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

General discussion about Leonard Cohen's songs and albums
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Goldin
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All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

Post by Goldin »

Stats based on Last.fm all-time (collected since 2003, as far as I know) ranking of the artist's top 500 songs. I've combined different versions of each song together.

More than 2,7 million scrobbles (listens, counted by Last.fm)

1. Suzanne

From 1,5 to 2 million

2. Hallelujah
3. Famous Blue Raincoat
4. So Long, Marianne

From 1 to 1,5 million

5. Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
6. Sisters of Mercy
7. Dance Me to the End of Love
8. I'm Your Man
9. Bird on the Wire
10. Chelsea Hotel #2
11. The Partisan
12. Everybody Knows

From 500 thousand to 1 million

13. Who by Fire
14. The Stranger Song
15. The Future
16. In My Secret Life
17. First We Take Manhattan
18. Avalanche
19. Take This Waltz
20. Waiting for the Miracle
21. Winter Lady
22. You Want It Darker (note: remixes by Paul Kalkbrenner & Solomun are counted separately)
23. Master Song
24. Tower of Song
25. Last Year's Man
26. Take This Longing
27. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

Complete list: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

It includes songs with Leonard Cohen as a guest vocalist (in green) & these songs, frequently misattributed to him by Last.fm users (in red):

Woke Up This Morning (actually by Alabama 3), still more popular among LC's listeners than 4 of the Recent Songs!
The Road to Hell (by Chris Rea)
A Girl Like You (by Edwyn Collins)
Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon (most notably by Urge Overkill)
You Are So Beautiful (by Joe Cocker)

The most and least popular songs from each studio album:

1967 — Suzanne — Stories of the Street
1969 — Bird on the Wire — The Butcher
1971 — Famous Blue Raincoat — Sing Another Song, Boys
1974 — Chelsea Hotel #2 — Leaving Green Sleeves
1977 — Memories — Fingerprints
1979 — The Guests — The Lost Canadian (Un Canadien Errant)
1984 — Hallelujah — Hunter's Lullaby
1988 — I'm Your Man — Jazz Police
1992 — The Future — Always
2001 — In My Secret Life — The Land of Plenty
2004 — The Letters — To a Teacher
2012 — Going Home — Banjo
2014 — Nevermind — Born in Chains
2016 — You Want It Darker — String Reprise / Treaty
2019 — Happens to the Heart — Listen to the Hummingbird

Rankings of studio albums as songbooks, i.e. collections of songs, some of which were reworked later:
by total number of scrobbles:

1. Songs of Leonard Cohen (10,47 million)
2. I'm Your Man (5,02)
3. Songs of Love and Hate (4,88)
4. New Skin for the Old Ceremony (4,54)
5. Various Positions (4,48)
6. Songs from a Room (4,42)
7. The Future (3,16)
8. Ten New Songs (2,81)
9. You Want It Darker (2,17)
10. Old Ideas (2,10)
11. Popular Problems (1,48)
12. Dear Heather (1,07)
13. Recent Songs (0,96)
14. Death of a Ladies' Man (0,84)
15. Thanks for the Dance (0,42)

by scrobbles per song:

1. Songs of Leonard Cohen (1,05 million)
2. I'm Your Man (623 thousands)
3. Songs of Love and Hate (610)
4. Various Positions (498)
5. Songs from a Room (442)
6. New Skin for the Old Ceremony (413)
7. The Future (352)
8. Ten New Songs (281)
9. You Want It Darker (242)
10. Old Ideas (210)
11. Popular Problems (165)
12. Death of a Ladies' Man (105)
13. Recent Songs (96)
14. Dear Heather (82)
15. Thanks for the Dance (46)

Total number of scrobbles: 50,6 million (slightly less than 50 million are counted in my table, based on top 500 chart entries).
Funny enough, there are 12 LC songs with more than 1 million listens each... and exactly the same number of studio albums.
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Hartmut
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Re: All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

Post by Hartmut »

Very interesting. Thank you!
robcarr
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Re: All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

Post by robcarr »

That's really interesting and informative. I appreciate your efforts.
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HugoD
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Re: All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

Post by HugoD »

This is a nice list indeed!
I have read it and was sometimes surprised by the ranking, but then I had to remind myself that this list has nothing to do with the best songs. it obvious that the more recent albums have less popularity due to the shorter time that they are available. Vice versa, the older albums have (much) more listens because they are much more familiar to several generations.

So therefore this is indeed a (very nice) popularity ranking.
Lille 2010, Dublin 2012, Mannheim 2013, Rotterdam 2013, Montréal 2017
Happiness is just the side effect of a meaningful life.
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lizzytysh
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Re: All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

Post by lizzytysh »

I loved reading this, Goldin! Thank you!!
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
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Joe Way
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Re: All LC songs ranked by popularity (based on 50 million listens)

Post by Joe Way »

The most surprising thing to me was that "Treaty, String Reprise" was the least liked song on his 2016 album. It is my favorite-otherwise I understand the rankings.

Thank you Goldin for compiling this!
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