{"id":973745,"date":"2019-11-26T07:30:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T14:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=918688"},"modified":"2019-11-26T07:30:03","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T14:30:03","slug":"song-you-need-to-know-leonard-cohen-puppets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/song-you-need-to-know-leonard-cohen-puppets\/","title":{"rendered":"Song You Need to Know: Leonard Cohen, \u2018Puppets\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not a lot of people can get away with uttering the word \u201cpuppet\u201d sans laughter. Leonard Cohen<\/a> was not \u201ca lot of people.\u201d Perhaps because he had a voice that would have gravitas even while ordering a burger and fries. Perhaps because he was both a musician and a seer.<\/p>\n

\u201cPuppets\u201d comes off of Cohen\u2019s posthumous album, Thanks for the Dance<\/em>, an evolution of a poem he published in 2006\u2019s Book of Longing<\/em>. A rumination on evil and control (\u201cGerman puppets burnt the Jews\u201d), \u201cPuppets\u201d stands in stark contrast to the rest of Cohen\u2019s velvet storytelling on Dance<\/em> \u2014 which makes it all the more powerful. A decade before now-President Trump uttered one of his many meme-able phrases, \u201cNo puppet,\u201d Cohen wrote: \u201cPuppet presidents command\/Puppet troops to burn the land.\u201d Cohen died<\/a> just a few days after the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

Posthumous albums are thorny for a lot of reasons, in this case because Cohen released his final album, You Want It Darker,<\/em> less than a month before his death. In one of his final interviews, with the New Yorker<\/em><\/a>, Cohen said: \u201cAt a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It\u2019s a clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.\u201d<\/p>\n

You Want It Darker<\/em> was just another part of putting his house in order. Like David Bowie\u2019s Blackstar<\/em>, it put a period on a long career, and no one was expecting for an epilogue. Perhaps that\u2019s what makes Thanks for the Dance<\/em> all the more stunning. Completed by Cohen\u2019s son Adam \u2014 along with Daniel Lanois, Beck and a cadre of other performers \u2014 it\u2019s \u201ca sort of s\u00e9ance as shiva,<\/em>\u201d according to Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Will Hermes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Cohen lives on \u2014 in songs, in his son, in our memories \u2014 and, despite when he penned the words, \u201cPuppets\u201d will continue to be relevant as long as humans are humans.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not a lot of people can get away with uttering the word \u201cpuppet\u201d sans laughter. Leonard Cohen was not \u201ca lot of people.\u201d Perhaps because he had a voice that would have gravitas even while ordering a burger and fries. Perhaps because he was both a musician and a seer. \u201cPuppets\u201d comes off of Cohen\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 02:12:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}