Complex Numbers

There's a Blaze of Light in Every Word

This one's been languishing in my queue for quite a while now.

The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"  

Let me just start by saying this: If you're "tired" of the song, if you're sick of hearing about it, if you're weary of its many versions... I don't want to hear it. There are few perfect songs out there, and this is one of them. I will never get tired of hearing it, and I will never get tired of hearing about it. You can just stop reading here if that's the case; chances are tomorrow I'll have something else to talk about (though I should note that I have at least one other Cohen article in the waiting room).

That said, Bono's version of it straight-up sucks.

Anyway, if you're still with me:

In the late 1970s, Leonard Cohen sat down to write a song about god, sex, love, and other mysteries of human existence that bring us to our knees for one reason or another. The legendary singer-songwriter, who was in his early forties at the time, knew how to write a hit: He had penned "Suzanne," "Bird on the Wire," "Lover, Lover, Lover," and dozens of other songs for both himself and other popular artists of the time.

I was first introduced, in my teens, to Leonard Cohen as a poet. It was only much later I discovered he did songs, too. The lyrics reflect the poetry. Hell, at least one of them started out as a poem.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen him in concert twice before he died, once in New York City and once in Las Vegas. And he was one of the many musical casualties of 2016, overshadowed in that (as usual) by more well-known artists such as David Bowie and Prince.

I say all this because I want to emphasize that it was not "Hallelujah" that brought me to his music, but rather vice-versa.

In the 35 years since it was originally released, "Hallelujah" has been covered by more than 300 other artists in virtually every genre. Willie Nelson, k.d. lang, Justin Timberlake, Bono, Brandi Carlile, Bon Jovi, Susan Boyle, Pentatonix, and Alexandra Burke...

BrandiCarlile does a completely amazing version of it. It's on her live album if you're interested. But none of them that I've ever heard actually suck -- except Bono's.

With its synth-heavy ’80s production, Cohen’s version of “Hallelujah” doesn’t announce itself as the chill-inducing secular hymn it’s now understood to be.

And I will admit that other artists did a much better rendition than the original. Such is the case with many of his songs. His voice is... an acquired taste, like Tom Waits', or gin.

“I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world,” Cohen once said. “The Hallelujah, the David’s Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.”

Which is probably one of the reasons the song has always appealed to me.

Cale’s pared down piano-and-vocals arrangement inspired Jeff Buckley to record what is arguably the definitive “Hallelujah,” a haunting, seductive performance found on the late singer-songwriter’s one and only studio album, 1994’s Grace. Buckley’s death in 1997 only heightened the power of his recording, and within a few years, “Hallelujah” was everywhere.

It's really the Cale / Buckley version that has spawned most other covers, including BrandiCarlile's. I'm pretty sure a lot of people still aren't aware that Cohen was the songwriter.

And yet, I've never fully been able to put my finger on exactly what the lyrics mean, metaphorically. I mean, obviously they have meaning; they're evocative, and they come from a truly amazing poet. This article ended up helping me with that, which is one reason I'm linking it here:

Putting aside all the biblical allusions and poetic language, “Hallelujah” is a pretty simple song about loving life despite—or because of—its harshness and disappointments.

And I don't think I can sum it all up better than the article does, in Cohen's own words.