Leonard Cohen is 80, sure, but it’s not like he needs to be young and spry to deliver some of popular music’s deepest, darkest songs. Cohen has been more active than he had been in years recently, releasing a pair of critically acclaimed studio albums—2012’s Old Ideas and this year’s Popular Problems—and touring the world, or at least the parts he can stand. On December 2, Cohen will release Live In Dublin, a three-CD plus DVD or Blu-ray set of a complete concert recorded in September of 2013. (In Dublin, in case you didn’t piece that together.) We’ve got an exclusive first look at “Everybody Knows,” a classic Cohen song from 1988’s I’m Your Man that has been covered dozens of times, by everybody from Don Henley to Concrete Blonde. But nobody delivers its bleak message—“Everybody knows the war is over / Everybody knows the good guys lost”—better than Cohen himself. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.
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