The dark stuff

Reflecting on Leonard Cohen's death for the Independent, a former colleague of mine Sam has drawn comparisons between Cohen's You Want It Darker (a tongue-in-cheek title, surely?) and David Bowie's Blackstar, concluding astutely that only the latter has come to seem like a meditation on mortality in the wake of its creator's death - Cohen's final record, by contrast, looked that way as soon as it was released.