This week is really testing my resolve, I tell you what.
Leonard Cohen passed away today, and that’s not wonderful news. But after nearly half a century of performing, he left behind a rich legacy of music, poetry and passionate writing about the dark beauty of life.
RIP Leonard Cohen
And he wrote a song of such crystalline perfection that it becomes reborn as something new with every artist’s interpretation, a brilliantly faceted reflection every time, all heartbreaking in their own way.
My favourite is still k.d. Lang’s:
(Alternately: here’s an article from early last year that ranks – snarkily – sixty covers of ‘Hallelujah’. There’s probably been another fifty covers of it published since then.)
Mind you, my favourite of his songs – and apropos of this week – is probably still “Everybody Knows”
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
RIP Leonard Cohen.
