As 2016 winds down and the history is written, one aspect of the year people will inevitably bring up is the sad amount of musical talent that has been lost. On Thursday, the music world lost another incredible figure: Leonard Cohen, the Canadian-born folk singer died at 82.

Much has already been written about Cohen’s legacy and the impact he has had on songwriters of the last 50 years, so I’ll just share my personal experience.

In my senior year of high school, many of my classmates embarked on a school-sponsored overnight trip to Disneyland. I opted not to join them, because by that point I already had gone on my personal senior trip just a month earlier. That would be 2009’s Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival. I saw many great artists over the course of that three-day weekend, but there were two who stood out as being particular highlights, and they happened to be the oldest artists on the bill. One was Paul McCartney, who was a lot of fun and gave me the surreal experience of seeing Beatles songs performed live by a former Beatle. The other was Leonard Cohen.

Admittedly, I was familiar with Cohen but had not really listened to his music much. I figured his set would be a good way to get introduced to him, and wow was I right. This was part of Cohen’s first U.S. tour in 15 years, and he delivered a somber but very soulful performance. It was a fitting tone, as he played shortly after the sun had gone down and the dry desert heat had given way to a cool desert night. Compared to the loud volume and dynamic theatrics of some of the other acts that performed that year, Cohen kept things quiet with no inane between-song chatter or obtrusive gimmicks. It was just him and a chorus of backup singers delivering some of Cohen’s most well-known songs and getting the audience to sing and applaud in the appropriate places.

The highlight for me was seeing him perform “Hallelujah”— a song which has been covered to death, with varying degrees of quality—and looking around at the thousands of faces singing along to the chorus— which if you haven’t heard it, is just the title sung multiple times in a somber tone. This was church for music lovers, and Cohen struck a chord with everyone who witnessed it. Even Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups, the band which had the unenviable task of following Cohen on that stage, remarked to the crowd “How about Leonard Cohen? Wasn’t he great?” to which the crowd cheered in agreement. Is it any wonder why I immediately felt inspired to start seeking out more Cohen?

The first album I owned of his was “The Essential Leonard Cohen,” which is as good a place as any to start. There, I got two distinct eras of Cohen: the folk-driven Cohen with the melancholy nasal croon, and the synth-heavy Cohen with the raspy baritone of the ‘80s and ‘90s. I like both eras, but if there’s a common thread that unites them, it’s that Cohen has always had a gift for songwriting. As a poet, he married the wit of Bob Dylan with the darker edge of Romantic poets like William Wordsworth. He blended Biblical imagery with commentary on modern society. He really was a poet’s poet.

That said, Cohen never enjoyed the sales or popularity that singers like Dylan did, but given the sheer amount of songwriters he inspired, I doubt he minded. To exemplify this, I highly recommend picking up the 1991 tribute album “I’m Your Fan,” which features renditions of his songs by such artists as R.E.M., Nick Cave and John Cale. That paints a good illustration of the range of great lyricists he inspired. That isn’t even taking into account artists like The Smiths, Tom Waits or Nirvana, the latter of whom delivered the lyric “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally,” which was Cohen-esque in its own way.

Before I close, I’d like to leave you with a list of my 10 favorite Cohen lyrics. It was very hard to narrow down, which just goes to show how phenomenal a songwriter he was. I also decided to limit it to one lyric per song.

1. “I said to Hank Williams/‘How lonely does it get?’/Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet/But I could hear him coughing all night long/a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song” (“Tower of Song”)

2. “The maestro says it’s Mozart, but it sounds like bubblegum/when you’re waiting for the miracle to come” (“Waiting for the Miracle”)

3. “They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom/For trying to change the system from within” (“First We Take Manhattan”)

4. “Your letters, they all say that you’re beside me now/Then why do I feel alone?” (“So Long, Marianne”)

5. “I’ve seen the nations rise and fall/I’ve heard their stories, heard them all/But love’s the only engine of survival” (“The Future”)

6. “Everybody knows the war is over/Everybody knows the good guys lost” (“Everybody Knows”)

7. “You who must leave everything that you cannot control / It begins with your family / But soon it comes round to your soul” (“Sisters of Mercy”)

8. “There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in” (“Anthem”)

9. “And even though it all went wrong/I’ll stand before the Lord of Song/With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah” (“Hallelujah”)

10. “You told me again you preferred handsome men/But for me you would make an exception” (“Chelsea Hotel No. 2”)

(I know I left a lot out. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comments.)

Thank you, Leonard Cohen, for your gift of song.