Jeff Cohen has shared his songs with the world for more than 20 years. His cross-genre catalog includes cuts by Sugarland, Josh Groban, and Marc Broussard alongside hit singles by Evan & Jaron (“Crazy for This Girl”), Big & Rich (“Holy Water”), and The Band Perry (“Postcard From Paris”). The singer, songwriter, producer, and publisher re-introduces himself as an artist with his new single “All the Light.” A song he says marks his first single in the streaming age, “All the Light” by Jeff Cohen and Pancho’s Lament is a soaring ballad of lasting love through life’s ups and downs.
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Cohen penned “All the Light” in separate writing sessions with Paul Duncan and Jenn Bostic during COVID-19 lockdown years ago. Initially, he thought the song might be something for an artist Duncan was working with and the pair collaborated on the lyrics with Cohen’s melody. He later shared the song with Bostic, who came up with the piano part and helped flesh out the lyrics.
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“I ended up keeping a few of the lines Paul did and then kept Jenn’s piano part,” Cohen says over lunch at Nashville’s Pinewood. “Then Jenn and I looked over a few lines. Then basically I just said, ‘This song is now a lot better than it was.’”
Cohen, who has more than 100 sync placements including songs in films and television shows like Jack and Jill, Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, and Saturday Night Live, says he’s been overwhelmed by the response to the song. Two people have called him to ask him to sing “All the Light” at their wedding while the music video has been played on CMT. After years of being embedded in the writing community in Nashville and London, Cohen says “All the Light” has inspired him to work on another album of original material as well as record some of his songs other artists have released.
“How do you figure out a way to keep doing this?” he says is a question he’s frequently asked by up-and-coming songwriters. “I think you have to evolve. I’m not gonna go as far as saying reinvent yourself, but reinvent yourself while still staying yourself. Try to figure out what your strengths are and try to figure out how you can monetize what your strengths are. That allows you to do other jobs that you know you’re going to get no money for that you just love doing.”
Cohen’s songwriting journey includes writing for television and film. He frequently plays corporate shows to make money as well.
“The truth is, people don’t realize you don’t have to be the greatest singer. You don’t have to be a shredder on guitar,” he advises. “Connect. Connect with your songwriting and your personality and the rest will do itself. I think if you start trying to be other people, you’re f—ed.”
Cohen says with every song he pens, he’s simply trying to write something he likes. While he loves the collaboration of co-writing, he’s gone back to the basics and tries to write solo as often as he can.
“I write a lot by myself, but some days I’m the music guy. Some days I’m the melody guy. Some days I’m the lyric guy. Some days I’m all three,” he notes. “[You have to] figure out where you belong in the write that day. There’s always some way you can contribute. … At the end of the day, the most important thing is the artist loves the song.”
One of his more recent cuts started alone on guitar at his dining room table. He knew he had something when he came up with the lyric: I see stars / Out of a million only one has got to fall / You and me, we don’t need to catch them all. He then took the 20-minute work tape he recorded to The Shires’ and they finished what would become “I See Stars.”
“I showed them it and they loved it,” Cohen recalls. “We wrote the verse lyrics together. Then Ben said, ‘Before you go to the chorus, why don’t you go to the D here?’ which is a beautiful Ben move. That song evolved from a stream of consciousness messing around for 20 minutes at my dining room table.”
The song went to No. 3 on the UK Airplay chart for the songwriter, who has had 11 radio-playlisted hit songs in England over the last five years. Cohen says he immediately felt good about “I See Stars” once it was written. Another top 5 hit, Evan & Jaron’s “Crazy for This Girl,” was a similar feeling the moment he played it live for the first time at New York’s The Bitter End.
“I saw the energy rise when I hit that chorus the first time,” he says of the 2000 pop hit. “This was the first time that song was ever played anywhere. I felt the energy in the room. I didn’t know it was gonna be a top-three hit. I knew it was good.”
As Cohen continues to record more original music for himself, he shows no signs of slowing down in the writing room. For Cohen, songwriting is much more than a job, it’s his life.
“When I get to the point where I dread going into a room to write with people or I don’t want to look at my guitar, then I’ll deal with it when that happens,” he says. “Do we have days where we don’t feel like writing? Do we have days where we’re more on than others? Yes, we do. Especially at this point in my life, I can’t do three writes a day, five days a week. I don’t want to do that. It’s not the best use of my energy. I still get excited when I’m in the room with a great writer or a great artist. I remember how lucky I am to get to do this.
“As a songwriter, you never know who’s going to hear your song,” he continues. “I love knowing that somewhere out there, someone I don’t know or someone I know is happy because they’re listening to my song or they’re sad because they’re listening to my song. I know that someone out there is having an emotional response to a song that I wrote. I never thought that was possible so I will keep doing this until I can’t.”
Cohen’s single “All the Light” is out now. He’ll perform in New York at The Bitter End on Saturday, January 13, at 6:30 p.m.
Photo Credit: Juan Patino/ Courtesy Jeff Cohen
