Top Ten Songs by Premiere Canadian Leonard Cohen

You could put most of Leonard Cohen's songs next to most of Bob Dylan's, and they're just as good. Some of Cohen's best songs are better than some of Dylan's best. Cohen has a way with words and a style perfect for songs: sexy, sarcastic, political, driven, ambitious, daring, cynical, humorous, fun, exciting, timeless, true, poetic, and so on. Here are the songs, above the rest, that should be listened to over and over again until Earth shatters into pieces.

10. Humbled in love - Just a good song, "… shut down in your love, forced to kneel in the mud - next to me." The song feels just like mud, like trumping through it with the scars of love, with a sarcastic, defeated, will-rise-again grin on your face.

9. Iodine/Fingerprints -Strange and unique songs. They both have a very unsettling and exciting feel to them, something only Cohen could come up with. It seems like he had fun with them, with the entire album they are featured on. And to me, that's what music is about: having fun-that and sending a message. Here the message is having fun!

8. Diamonds in the Mine - As in "There are no diamonds in the mine." A typical Cohen song, goofy, quirky and silly, bittersweet, sarcastic and fun, good and well-written, and never gets old.

7. Take this Waltz - While much of the songwriting credit needs to go to Garcia Lorca, who Cohen based this song on, as a tribute, it still registers in as a fantastic song.

6. The Captain - An epic poem of a song, just flows and flows and flows and flows with beautiful lines like "there is no decent place to stand, in a mass-acre; but if a woman takes your hand then go and stand with her."

5. Everybody knows/I'm your man - they're kind of the same song. They are back to back on the same album, his voice and the music are very similar, and even the sort of sarcastic, poetic lyrical flow are similar. They are similar, and similar in their greatness.

4. Chelsea Hotel, No. 2 - Any song so pretty that also incorporates the line "Giving me head on an unmade bead, while the limousine waits in the street," has to be near the top of any list.

3. Is this what you wanted? - From a song? Yes! This song is hilarious, and so true when it comes to relationships. It's fun to listen to, and it makes you feel good about failed relationships. What more can you ask for?

2. Dance me to the end of love - "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin; dance me to your beauty till I'm gathered safely in…" Imagine a hundred lines that all flow perfectly and harmoniously together, and you have this song.

1. Famous Blue Raincoat - A famous blue raincoat, a girl, a lock of her hair, a family torn by her, a man deep in the desert, a letter, it all amounts to Cohen's best song. Period.