Leonard Cohen is the king of Obama’s Canadian playlist
CBC Radio 2 invited listeners to assemble a playlist for Barack Obama, featuring 49 songs from north of the 49th parallel. Drawn from over 130,000 votes, the results are fairly predictable. Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Oscar Peterson and the Tragically Hip all have two numbers each on the list. But only Leonard Cohen has three, if you include two of his own recordings—Suzanne and the prescient Democracy (is coming to the U.S.A.)—plus k. d. lang’s rendition of Hallelujah. One dark horse winner was the Parachute Club’s Rise Up, a spot the band’s singer, Lorraine Segato, won after a vigorous email campaign, urging that this 1983 anthem of social change was tailor-made for the new president.