"Hallelujah" course

I first heard the song “Hallelujah” at a party. I don’t remember the occasion but seeing as it was college, alcohol was involved surely. It was a small gathering, friends of friends much more keen to music and artistic pursuits, I felt a little awkward. The cd (compact disc for you millennials) on repeat was Jeff Buckley’s Grace. His piercing vocals on “Hallelujah” were impossible to ignore and I relished hearing it over and over.

I found out later that the song was written by someone else. Covered by another someone else, who made it cool for other someones' to cover. This I had to research a bit. If not to find the true author of the song, at least to pull back the layers of this popular work and maybe discover some meaning. Not for the sake of the lyrics but to figure out how this became the “it” song.

 It was re-imagined in the early nineties by John Cale whose version is usually the one that everyone covers. It’s the most modern version, sad and bittersweet. Leonard Cohen wrote the song and put it on his album Various Positions in 1984. It must not have made much of a splash because no one seemed to notice it until Cale put a different spin on in the early nineties. He added a silky smooth piano sound and  upped the sentimentality.  Buckley’s version is closest to Cale in attitude and texture and a more obvious reference to a broken relationship.

Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Buckley has the superior voice and his chords extend the song beyond the Cohen’s deep bass limits.

Somewhere along the way the song started popping up in television shows and movies. Mostly during sad moments deaths and funerals. I won’t spoil the episode but West Wing used it perfectly in a last-show-of-the-season gut punch. Shrek used the John Cale version and suddenly everyone wanted to use some version of “Hallelujah” or write their own.Talent contests like American Idol and Voice continue to see young vocalists performing some version.

 Leonard Cohen is used to praise about his poetic gifts but even he must be pinching himself over the extra life of this song. It was a forgotten B side on an unremarkable record before the explosion of remakes and covers.

 I watched a video recently of a live performance of the song that won’t quit. Cohen had a backup vocals singing along the gospel style to the chorus, the way Baptists do in church with ‘aleluuuuujahs’ heavy on the ‘uuu’. If this version with the choir is the way he recorded it I can see why it wasn’t a hit. It just doesn’t work as a church song despite the references to David playing for the Lord. Cohen’s scratchy voice is not melodic enough for the bouncy gospel track.

 It sounds like a worship leader in practice before his morning coffee.

I know I know, he wrote the song and he intended it to be a somber look at…something. I’ve never been good with meaning in poems or music lyrics. Every version of the song begins with King David, his gift for song and his affair.

You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty in the Moonlight overthrew ya

 Or maybe Samson with Delilah.

She tied you to your kitchen chair, she broke your crown she cut your hair

Some critics think some of the versions (especially Buckley’s) have a sexual quality, an exciting high followed by a deep low. Poisonous affairs might have been on Cohen’s mind when he wrote his version but likely he had a chord progression in mind and set it to themes borrowed heavily from the Old Testament.

…it goes like this, the fourth the fifth, the minor fall the major lift

The Cale version switches out some of Cohen’s lyrics and puts in references to a relationship gone south.

There was a time you let me know

 what’s really going on below.

But now you never show it to me do you?

I looked for an interview with Mr. Cohen just to get a sense of the writing and word choice. I found a few quotes about the differences between the religious Hallelujah and the secular one but no real descriptions. Nothing jumps out except that it took him a long time to write it, 5 years according to one source.

Poetic verse continues to escape me.

So the short version goes like this: Leonard Cohen writes and records the infamous composition in 1984 but with little fanfare. John Cale re-imagines it by changing the lyrics slightly but keeping the ever important climbing, climbing, and falling chord pattern. Every two bit singer songwriter up and coming vocalist covers some form because it is quite a beautiful song, in sound and emotion more than in meaning.

If I could go back to that party where I first heard the recording from Buckley I would beg them to stop playing it. All great works of art get copied, music is no different. I love the song but I’ve heard my share. When the covers stop and recordings of that infamous song stop getting made, I’ll simply say “Hallelujah”!

Buckley Version