Leonard Cohen is about as good as it gets when it comes to songwriting. His voice has grown deeper over the years, and has tremendous atmosphere which sets off the lyrics perfectly. He has a marvelous sense of humour.

You could say all of the above as well about Bob Dylan.

People who can't stand either Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan always sound to me like they have fixated on one or two details about the man in question...and completely failed to comprehend anything else about him whatsoever.

It's as if they were evaluating New York City on the basis of a single street or something...

It works this way: there is something that initially puts them off...(the sound of the voice)...(a "depressing" song they heard). They form an opinion based on that, and they never look any further. It's as if they picked up a book, randomly opened it to a single page, read a sentence they couldn't identify with...and said, "This is crap!" End of story.

Leonard Cohen is simply marvelous, and it is totally silly to characterize all his songs as "depressing" or lacking a good tune. Ditto for Dylan. Dylan has written some of the most beautiful tunes in history, and those among you who can't stand his voice could grasp that instantly if you heard someone else (whose voice you like) doing those tunes. But...if someone told you, "That's a Dylan song." your autopilot would probably kick in right away, and you'd say, "It's crap!" :-)

Dylan is at least as much a musician as he is a lyricist, and he's a superb lyricist. So is Cohen. Listen to Jennifer Warnes do Cohen if you don't like his voice, and THEN tell me those songs have no good tune!

Just because you don't like a musician's style does not necessarily mean he's no good AS a musician.