Nadeslala Anna Stepien

Leonard Cohen, who will celebrate his 80th birthday in a few weeks, will reportedly mark the occasion with a new album, his 13th. It will be titled Popular Problems, and because the summer that is mercifully about to end has been dense with nothing but problems, popular or otherwise, here’s a preview of the album’s first song, “Almost Like the Blues.”

“Though I let my heart get frozen,” Cohen sings, “to keep away the rot / my father says I’m chosen / my mother says I’m not / I listened to their story of the gypsies and the Jews / It was good, it wasn’t boring / It was almost like the blues.”