As noted by a poster in the "Devastating Day for Bush" thread, Leonard Cohen was 70 yesterday. Cohen's
Everybody Knows, written in 1988, might be the most cynical song ever written. I used to play and sing the song a lot in the late '80s and early '90s, when it certainly fit the late Reagan/early Bush I era.
But Bush II has clearly earned the right to be forever associated with the song. Just read the first verse below. Every line is amazingly prescient and almost unbearably sad in light of the last four years.
Cohen is brilliantly haunting. His songs for
McCabe and Mrs. Miller were essential to that film's snowy, melancholy creepiness. Cohen makes Randy Newman's cynical stuff (which I also love) seem like Raffi.
Opening verse:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that 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
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died . . .
Follow the link to the rest. It's worth it.