Next month brings the release of the first posthumous Leonard Cohen album, Thanks For the Dance. For the nine-track LP, Cohen’s son, Adam, took leftover sketches and poems from his father’s 2016 LP, You Want it Darker, and fleshed them out with the assistance of Beck, Damien Rice, The National’s Bryce Dessner, and others. Following last month’s teaser track, “The Goal”, “Happens to the Heart” has now been released as the album’s first official single.
The song’s accompanying video was inspired by Cohen’s time spent as a Buddhist monk living at California’s Mount Baldy Zen Center. “I wanted to make something that spoke to Leonard’s years as a zen monk,” Adirector Daniel Askill told Rolling Stone. “This film is a quiet, symbolic narrative that charts the letting go of ego and the trappings of fame.” Watch it below.
Thanks For the Dance is out on November 22nd.
