Various Artists' I'm Your Fan

WhenI'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohenhit stores in 1991, Leonard Cohen's career had plummeted from its revered 1960s high. Cohen's record label had refused to release his 1984 albumVarious Positions--including the song "Hallelujah"--in the United States. Luckily, Velvet Underground founder John Cale was one of the few whodidhear "Hallelujah," and he covered it forI'm Your Fan, a collection of Cohen's songs produced by a French fanzine. Jeff Buckley adored the tribute album and covered Cale's cover in 1994, never having heard Cohen's still-obscure original version. In 2016,Stereogumlabeled the tribute album "possibly the most universally derided format in pop music." However, without a tribute album, you wouldn't know the song "Hallelujah." Through Buckley through Cale, "Hallelujah" is now one of the most often-performed songs in the world--and it wouldn't be without this tribute album.I'm Your Fanthus offers a particularly notable example of a much broader truth: Despite all the eye-rolling they inspire, tribute albums matter. They can resuscitate legends' fading careers, or expose obscure artists who never had much of a career to begin with.