LEONARD COHEN was hailed as a “true visionary” yesterday, after it was announced he had died at the age of 82.

British singers were among many paying tribute to a musician they considered a major influence and hero.

Charlotte Church described Mr Cohen as a “beautiful soul,” while Lily Allen tweeted: “As if the week could get any worse. Thank you Leonard Cohen, for all the things.”

And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the Star that he “loved Cohen’s thoughts and haunting songs.” Paying tribute to the legendary Canadian poet and singer, Mr Corbyn said: “RIP. You taught us all the profundity of our experiences.”

Mr Cohen released his 14th studio album just last month. His melancholic lyrics and gravelly tones made classics of songs such as So Long, Marianne, Bird On The Wire and Suzanne, but he became best known for Hallelujah after it was covered by Jeff Buckley.

He also performed his own versions of the socialist anthem Solidarity Forever and the French resistance song The Partisan.

In a recent interview, he said he was “ready to die.” But at a Los Angeles listening party shortly later, he clarified: “I think I was exaggerating. I’ve always been into self-dramatisation. I intend to live for ever.”

Leading the tributes yesterday, Mr Cohen’s manager Robert Kory said: “Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candor, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “No other artist’s music felt or sounded like Leonard Cohen’s.

“Yet his work resonated across generations. Canada and the world will miss him.”

In 2009 the singer-songwriter was criticised for staging a concert in Tel Aviv, and a Ramallah appearance organised subsequently was cancelled after being labelled a “pity concert.” He had previously sung for Israeli soldiers during the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

He could be evasive and contradictory on political issues, but his lyrics regularly included references to struggle. Chelsea Hotel No. 2 spoke of the “workers in song,” while Everybody Knows included the lines: “Everybody knows the fight was fixed / The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.”

Mr Cohen considered himself both a Jew and a Buddhist, and spent five years in the 1990s living as a Buddhist monk.

Musician Nick Cave described Mr Cohen as “the greatest songwriter of them all — utterly unique and impossible to imitate, no matter how hard we tried.”