You Want It Darker

Cohen's spinal fractures and mobility problems kept him at home, so the files were emailed to collaborators. Speaking to David Remnick of the New Yorker in October 2016, he said the big change was the proximity to death.

It went to number 1 in Canada for three weeks, number 10 in the United States, number 4 in Britain and number 1 in many European countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Metacritic scores it 92, the Guardian and Telegraph gave it five stars, and it won the Juno for Album of the Year in 2017.

Cohen said that his predicament enabled him to work with more concentration and continuity than at other times in his life. Adam Cohen said the album was a little sparser and more acoustic than recent ones, and that Cohen would sometimes stand in front of the speakers in bouts of joy while they replayed a song. Cantor Gideon Zelermyer and the Shaar Hashomayim Choir from his childhood synagogue joined him on the record. In Canada it sold 106,000 units by the end of the year, and in Flanders it stayed at number 1 for seven weeks.

Pitchfork's Stacey Anderson read the title as a prescription rather than a question and noted that the choir drops out while Cohen chants "Hineni" three times, a Hebrew cry of readiness. She also pointed to the bluegrass strings of Steer Your Way and to the closing string reprise, the first of its kind on a Cohen album.