How the light gets in: Poet, songwriter Leonard Cohen dead at 82

LOS ANGELES -- Leonard Cohen, the baritone-voiced Canadian singer-songwriter who seamlessly blended spirituality and sexuality in songs such as "Hallelujah," "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire," has died at age 82.

Cohen passed away, and a memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date, Catherine McNelly, a representative from his record label, said Thursday. No further details on his death were given.

Cohen, also renowned as a poet, novelist and aspiring Zen monk, blended folk music with a darker, sexual edge that won him fans around the world and among fellow musicians such as Bob Dylan and R.E.M.

He remained wildly popular into his 80s, when his voice plunged to gravelly depths. He toured as recently as earlier this year and released a new album, "You Want it Darker," just last month.

His "Hallelujah" went from cult hit to modern standard, now a staple on movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, reality shows and high-school choir concerts.

Cohen, who once said he got into music because he couldn't make a living as a poet, rose to prominence during the folk-music revival of the 1960s.

During those years, he traveled the folk circuit with younger artists such as Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and others.

His contemporary Kris Kristofferson once said he wanted the opening lines to Cohen's "Bird on a Wire," on his tombstone.

They would be a perfect epitaph for Cohen himself: "Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free."

"Hamilton" star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda quoted those lines Thursday night on Twitter as one of many paying tribute to Cohen.

The Montreal-born Cohen never seemed quite as comfortable on stage, however, and he chalked it up in part to being the old man among the group.

"I was at least 10 years older than the rest of them," he told Magazine, a supplement to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in 2001.

Judy Collins, who had a hit with Cohen's song "Suzanne," once recalled he was so shy, he quit halfway through his first public performance of it, and she had to coax him back onstage.

Like Dylan, his voice lacked polish but rang with emotion.

In 2016, Dylan told The New Yorker that Cohen's best work was "deep and truthful, "multidimensional" and "surprisingly melodic."

"When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius," Dylan said. "Even the counterpoint lines -- they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music."

It was Dylan who first recognized the potential of 1984's "Hallelujah," performing it twice in concert during the mid-1980s, once in Cohen's native Canada.

It had gone unnoticed when it came out on an independent-label album that had been rejected by Cohen's label.

He had filled a notebook with some 80 verses before recording the song, which he said despite its religious references to David, Bathseba and Samson was an attempt to give a nonreligious context to "hallelujah," an expression of praise.