I Like People That Can’t Sing

    (Fantagraphics, 2025)

In 1991, legendary but down-and-out rock critic Paul Nelson landed his dream assignment: fly from New York to Los Angeles and separately interview two of the most distinguished popular music artists: Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams. He encounters them at a time in their careers when both are wrestling with their respective record companies to be better taken seriously—in some cases just to be heard. Previously unpublished, these landmark interviews provide the opportunity to compare, among other things (upbringing, education, influences, loves and losses), the thought processes behind Cohen and his music (“I’ve always admired the people who could write great songs in the back of taxicabs like Hank Williams. I was never one of those guys”) to Williams and hers (“See, I’m trying to dispel the myth … that you have to be miserable and suffering and so on and so forth to be able to write”).I Like People That Can’t Sing allows us to read the minds, so to speak, of these nonpareil singer-songwriters over three decades after the fact. Whether it’s the sometimes prickly Williams, protecting her time and privacy, or the ever-elegant Cohen, openly discussing his bouts with depression, the book sometimes reads like an intimate conversation (Williams discussing her estranged brother), other times as a late-night confession (Cohen on the breakup of his marriage). Includes a heartfelt foreword recounting her relationships with Cohen and Nelson by Suzanne Vega.
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