New Box Set for Leonard Cohen Catalog

Leonard Cohen's sprawling, highly acclaimed body of work is about to be collected in a new box set featuring everything he has released. The Complete Albums Collection will be released in two forms on October 11th – a 17-disc set with all of his albums including live recordings, and an 11-disc version with only his studio releases.

Photos: Leonard Cohen at Songwriters Hall of Fame
Each disc in the set will be packaged in a "mini-LP replica" CD sleeve, and the package will include a thick booklet featuring extensive liner notes, discographical annotations and an essay by Cohen scholar Pico Iyer. All of the music in the set has been remastered from the original analog master tapes.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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