Just before his 80th birthday a couple of weeks ago Leonard Cohen released his thirteenth studio album, Popular Problems. Last year I perched near the rafters of the O2 to watch him perform a three hour set, complete with six song encore. It was phenomenal.
Cohen has never been the cheeriest of performers, but on that night, and I think in the past few years he has started to have fun again. I think he has started to enjoy being back on the road, and I think this new album is his best in a couple of decades and possibly more. There is material on here that stands shoulder to shoulder with the haunting lyrics of the late 60s and 70s when the poet first wound his graveling melodies round rhyming couplets.
He was infamously forced back onto the road by his partner who had made off with most of his life savings and needed to sing for his supper. But after paying off his debts and putting a little aside he kept on travelling. Two years ago he release Old Ideas which I skeptically purchased having thought very little of his only previous offerings during my music conscious lifetime – Ten New Songs and Dear Heather are better forgotten. But in Old Ideas was the emotion and lyrical artistry that helped him in those early years overcome a limited musical ability, but also a freshness that was reflected when I saw him perform live.
Popular Problems is a short album but stuffed full of brilliance. Several songs have stuck with me as I’ve listen through over the last couple of days, but one stands out: You Got Me Singing. The lyrics are below as is a video. This song would make it into my top ten Cohen songs of all time: it’s not got the strength of lyrics of The Stranger’s Song, the self deprecation of Chelsea Hotel No. 2; I doubt it will be covered ad nauseum like the Hallelujah hymn it references and nor does it shock the listener as Sing Another Song, Boys does in it’s closing stages. But it is beautiful. A
As with so much from Cohen’s pen one has to wonder at the possible theological meanings of every line. These meditations are not clear in You Got Me Singing, but unambiguous in others, in Samson in New Orleans and Born in Chains, it is impossible to avoid.
The test for the greatness of an album is not whether I enjoy it today but if I’ll still be selecting it in years to come. Nearly 50 years after Songs of Leonard Cohen was released I have high hopes for this 13th chapter of the canon.
You got me singing even though the news is bad
You got me singing the only song I’ve ever had
You got me singing ever since the river died
You got me thinking of all the places we could hide
You got me singing even though the world is gone
You got me thinking that I’d like to carry on
You got me singing even though it all looks grim
You got me singing the hallelujah hymn
Singing that hallelujah hymn
You got me singing like a prisoner in a jail
You got me singing like my pardon’s in the mail
You got me wishing our little love would last
You got me thinking like those people of the past
You got me singing even though the world is gone
You got me thinking that I’d like to carry on
You got me singing even though it all went wrong
You got me singing the hallelujah song
Singing that hallelujah song
