“You got me singing
even though the news is bad
You got me singing
the only song I ever had.”~Leonard Cohen, “You Got Me Singing”
Leonard Cohen is a lover not a fighter. More than ever, we need what he’s got to offer.
Cohen’s new CD, Popular Problems, is a soothing antidote to our troubled world. Available to listen online, and for purchase September 23, the album is already garnering great reviews and has hit #1 as a pre-order on major online sellers.
Soon-to-be-eighty, Cohen is sounding better–and more relevant–than ever with songs about love and loss, war and peace, politics and religion, and everything in between. They are brutal but beautiful, as all good poetry should be.
The song Almost Like the Blues echoes what so many of us are thinking and feeling as we watch the horrific news unfold in our living rooms every night:
True to form, many of Cohen’s new songs ruminate on relationships–the passion and the regrets of love lost. But he doesn’t leave us heart-broken. His final track You Got Me Singing reminds us (as he’s told us before) that “there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
“You got me singing
Even though the world is gone
You got me singing
And I’d like to carry on.”
The album is not a dark vision of our troubled times. It’s a light. A love song to the world.
I love this. I love him. And you are so right, Booksy. We need him more than ever right now. Thank goodness he’s still around and going strong.
Yup, this album is going to be on constant play in my house. Hopefully it will block out all the bad news.
Always so great to hear from you. 🙂
Excellent review and how I love those 4 lines from ‘you got me singing’, that sums it all up not? Aaaand, I find it very re-assuring that one can indeed become eighty and still make beautiful things, affect the world and on top of that, be ever so stylish! hugs from Ohio.
Very reassuring! My mother is the same age, also a Montrealer. That generation of Montrealers are cool as cucumbers, tough, wise and smart. I wish they could go on forever.
And you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. He’s incredibly stylish.
His songs are poetry. He’s a poet who happens also be a talented musician and singer……a perfect combo!
…..We find ourselves on different sides
Of a line that nobody drew
Though it all may be one in the higher eye
Down here where we live it is two….
:: Different Sides, Old Ideas
Beautiful. His words and voice combined take me places that’s for sure. he is mesmerizing….