In an interview with Alastair Pirrie of the New Musical Express in March 1973 - just two years after the album was released - Cohen disparaged the LP: "I suppose you could call it gimmicky if you were feeling uncharitable towards me. I have certainly felt uncharitable towards me from time to time over that record, and regretted many things. It was over-produced and over elaborated...an experiment that failed." Several of the songs from Songs of Love and Hate would be featured on Cohen's 1972 European tour, a trek that would be documented in Tony Palmer's 1974 documentary Bird on the Wire. With the exception of "Last Year's Man", Cohen performed every song live (he had played "Dress Rehearsal Rag" in concert two years before Songs of Love and Hate was released). Artwork The front of the album sleeve is a sparsely detailed black-and-white photo of Cohen, smiling, with several days' beard growth. The back cover has no track listing, and quotes Cohen's short poem "They Locked Up A Man": They locked up a man Who wanted to rule the world The fools They locked up the wrong man Reception The album reached no. 145 on the US Billboard 200, but was his most commercially successful album in many other parts of the world, reaching no. 4 in the UK and no. 8 in Australia. Writing in 2011, Cohen biographer Anthony Reynolds noted, "In some quarters it was the album that seemed to seal Cohen's reputation as being something of a downer, to say the least." In his review of the 2007 reissue release, Tim Nelson of BBC Music stated that Cohen's third LP "is perhaps less varied than the first two albums, but the focus is more intense and the sequencing superb. Be warned though: this is one of the scariest albums of the last forty years...". Mark Deming of AllMusic calls Songs of Love and Hate "one of Leonard Cohen's most emotionally intense albums - which, given the nature of Cohen's body of work, is no small statement." In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked the album no. 295 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, being the only Cohen album to make the list until Songs of Leonard Cohen reached No. 195 on the 2020 reissue, an edition the album failed to make. It was ranked no. 74 on Pitchfork Media'''s 2004 list of