Leonard Cohen – Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist, Icon, and Punchline Figure Of Speech

I’ve previously pointed out that Leonard Cohen is a nickname magnet.¹ It turns out that he is also a metaphor magnet. i.e., he or his songs are frequently employed in ostensibly humorous figures of speech – almost always to connote something negative.

This phenomenon seems especially prevalent in the British media, although this may be an observational error stemming from my inability to comprehend any language other than English. For all I know, the entirety of contemporary popular culture in Norway could be built upon Cohen-dependent analogical constructs hidden from me by my ignorance of the Norwegian language.

In any case, I have collected a number of these figures of speech and, like Mr Cohen himself, “I’m not the sort of chap who would keep this to himself … .²

Today’s offering is a lament by Neil, a character in The Young Ones, a British comedy series described by the IMDb as “the crazy and sometimes surreal comedic adventures of four very different students in Thatcher’s Britain.”

Neil complains,

No one ever listens to me anyway.
I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record.

The video clip below demonstrates this line in situ.

1. Leonard Cohen, AKA … – The Nicknames [↩]
2. Leonard Cohen, in concert at Praha on August 29, 2009 [↩]