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Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah For This Superb Piece Of Music

🕑 Added 2025-01-24 15:10:41 +0000 UTC

Comments

marielblues

Glad y'all like it so much. To me, it's still Halle-yawn, Halle-zzzzzzz

Adrian Sturgess

I love his guitar intro - sublime, but for me his voice lacks the gravitas and sonority of Cohen. I would listen to that intro anytime though - thanks for sharing. :)

hgf

i'd really like, having heard your reaction to hallelujah, for you to do one on "Darker". Done at the very end of his lie, his relationship with God and religion and the torment and contradictions hat emerge therefrom, are fascinating.

Ricardo Roth

ALWAYS album version first! especially when she wanted to hear the original song

Trevor Miner

I fell in love with Leonard Cohen’s voice in 1990 when I heard him sing Everybody Knows in the movie Pump Up The Volume. I have heard countless covers of Hallelujah by many great artists but his single voice gives the song the human qualities that pull you deep into the pain and suffering. It’s with this pain that you can find the joy of hallelujah. I respect Buckley for his rendition mostly because it’s arguable that none of us would be talking about this song if he hadn’t recognized its beauty when no one else had. K. D Lang has a beautiful voice but has a church quality to it and her rendition looses the guttural struggles of humanity to my ears. It will always be Cohen for me. Tears in my soul every time I hear him sing Hallelujah!

Rob Mantel

Vlad! Why in the world not the album version first and then this live version with video included. A bit of a missed chance in my opinion. Maybe make it up to us by selecting an older song next. Maybe Dress Rehearsal Rag? And one day of course you can't escape the Famous Blue Raincoat. As to the gravely voice, I think many people are refering to his final album mostly. A great listen too of course, but not just yet.

Lynn Poole

That must have been a wonderful experience. You said it. No one can sing a Leonard Cohen song as good as the man himself.

Lior Goell

Amy, I think you are spot on with your observation about the imperfection - I feel that Cohen was a great humanist - he saw the divine and the secular, the holy and the carnal as part of the human - that together with it's muse, creativity and desires can engender both beauty and ugliness. When he wrote his beautiful tribute to Janis Joplin - and wrote "giving me head on the unmade bed, while the limousines wait in the street" I'm sure he did not see it as lewd in his mind nor "...That's all, I don't even think of you that often" rude... It's all about us as humans: flesh, beauty, ugliness, religion , mysticism. “From the bloody cross on top of Calvary To the beach of Malibu” (From: Everybody knows) One more callout: Cohen loves to jump from the personal to the collective and back: “You say I took the name in vain..” verse so it starts with a personal gripe - HIM but then goes to the global with “There's a blaze of light in every word” (holy / temporal etc...) - COLLECTIVE / HUMANITY Then back to the personal: “It doesn't matter which YOU heard” (You) He does this all the time beautifully (re: story of Isaac, If it be your will, and more)

Allan Middleton

i may have forgotten large swathes of my early childhood but will always remember that when i was around 7 or 8yo, we had a poet visit the school and oddly enough he also said... "it drives me crazy that everyone tries to interpret my work in ways i never intended".

Jon McGuire

IMO. Still the most beautiful version. Buckley’s voice was built for this song. https://youtu.be/y8AWFf7EAc4?si=T-dUpjCi-QAA4eep

Rea Lavi

I've seen Cohen and his terrific band perform this live while the Sun was setting. That's how he timed his set. It was tremendous. His voice was right for his songs, that's all I can say.

TangoEliott

Better you than me! I am glad you like it. To me it isn't even a voice.

Lynn Poole

Amy thank you for highlighting his voice. It is unique and distinct and the right voice for the lyrics. So many have covered this song but I think most fall short.

Paul D. Hoffmaster III

The first time I heard the song was in the movie Shrek. John Cale is used in the movie and Rufus Wainwright sang "Hallelujah" on the soundtrack album. Leonard Cohen old and young versions, has with others that have sung the song work for me. Maybe it is the song that is what really counts for me more than the singer with this song. Saying that, Leonard's older voice adds more weight to the song for me. The relationship between two can be so complex and more so as time goes by. I hear this as a lover's song more than anything else that one can bring to the song. The song says more to that than I have ever been able too for that. Good review Amy. :)

Lynn Poole

I love his voice. When I listen to this song, its's his version I listen to. If I listen to anyone else, it's Buckley.

Sten Ekedahl

I was quite familiar with Leonard Cohen and many of his songs. I even bought a book with his songs and added "Suzanne", and "Bird on a Wire", to my repertoire. But I hadn't heard Halleluja until the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Calgary when k. d. lang (that's how she actually spells her name) performed it. It really hit me like a ton of bricks. I can't really explain why. It was a combination of her intense performance and the beauty of both the melody and the lyrics. Have always loved this song ever since. When it was announced that Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel prize in literature, my immediate reaction was that Leonard Cohen would have been a better choice in my opinion.

Misty Bastian

Thank you, Amy, for taking on this song, even though you already knew it—and especially thank you for explaining the music theory problem. That is definitely not my strength, but I’ve frequently thought that there is something dissonant going on between words and music in this song. I’ve always liked it, but… You asked about the words and what they mean to us. Well, it’s classic Cohen: the connection and disconnection between the love of God and the love of the flesh. Cohen is always exploring that territory, but maybe nowhere as clearly as here. He starts off with trying to explain to somebody (his lover? Us?) about how music ought to be a praise for God but ends up taking us along to that moonlight-bathed roof, where we spy on Bathsheba with David. He lines a sexual encounter (of the BDSM variety?) that starts out purely carnal but ends up becoming a spiritual praise. He wants his lover (us?) to experience a series of hallelujahs along with him, but they become broken by the end. In his aging voice, they sound even more so than ever. So, not God or the devil here, not sin or spirit, either. Maybe in the end, it’s all music. Hallelujah.

TangoEliott

It is comforting to know that others feel the same and understand. You are right!

Chester Beals

I have to agree with you, Tango. Cohen's later voice is unappealing to me, it sounds like he's making an obscene phonecall. For me his later work falls into that category of "love his songwriting, but would rather hear ANYONE else perform his songs". I can say the same of Dylan. Billy Joel's cover of Light as the Breeze, or Jann Arden's cover of If It Be Your Will are a couple of the best Cohen covers ever made.

Tracey Baron

It's funny, but as a retired English teacher, I feel an oddity in the song in the same way that you felt in the music. I would never recommend to a student rhyming the word "hallelujah" (such an old and revered word) with the words "do ya" and yet somehow it works within the context of the song. This is one of the classics.

TangoEliott

I wish I liked that one too

George Brady

Jeff Buckley's version has touched me the most, over time.

George Brady

Well said.

Marduk777

I'll take "Suzanne" over this every time.

TangoEliott

I am so happy for you. I have tried to listen to so many people sing it and I mostly couldn't get through the first verse but forced myself. It clouded the song for me. And then one day I listened to K.D. and I cried a good kind of cry and I must have played it 20 times. And it was then that I felt the passion of the lyrics and the melody that became like feathers floating in the wind. In calm winds, in hurricane winds, just in winds. I floated with it and I understood the depth. I so envy you.

Wonne

What Amy says about the strange feeling when the musical terminology in the lyrics is different from the actual music… it reminded me of that concentration test where you have to name colours you see. The words of colours are written in different colours, so the word „green“ written in red. i hope there is more Leonard Cohen coming, there are so many more songs to enjoy.

TangoEliott

Sorry about the 3rd post. But to me this song is about romantic, sexual, relationships and how when they are going well the act of loving someone is God like and when it ends or fails it is drawing on God instead of praising God or thanking God or giving God the credit for it. It can be broken. It can be shallow. It can be completely gone but it reaches the same ending. It is about the depth of pain dressed in physicality. It is about the lessons learned that diminish the beauty but not the level of emotion. Just a different emotion. But the same audience. It is about the elegance of love, sex, failure, loss, and disappointment. The melody almost conflicts with the pain as the melody is one of the all time greatest ever written.

Wonne

Its interesting how tastes are so different, i love his voice the older it gets. The last two albums…. Pure goosebumps for me!

TONY SURRATT

Enjoyed that.

TangoEliott

Ok you finished it and I guess I am a very basic and simple person because although I think he is one of the greatest song writers of all times, I think his voice is not pleasing to my ears. I will admit it is filled with emotion but it is not attractive to me. Although his voice might suit the lyrics in terms of them being a cry out of deep emotion, it does nothing to make me like the song better. In fact, as I wrote before, the only person I now want to listen to (and I will listen to new voices) is K.D. Lang. In her voice I hear the pain, the struggle, the heartbreak, the emotion. In Leonard's voice I hear something I do not want to hear again. But I listened because of Amy. This song is so special, the melody, the lyrics, are so magnificent. I believe it is one of the greatest songs of all time. Sorry I am not capable of enjoying him singing it. But he wrote it and that makes him a genius to me.

TangoEliott

That took me someplace but not to KD, but that is ok. I play that quite often

Deborah June

Yes! https://youtu.be/YYiMJ2bC65A?si=t0O2BQ8icd27w0lC

TangoEliott

In my opinion K.D. Lang does it better than any other human being. Leonard agreed.

Kristina Mathesen

I haven’t even heard your reaction and analysis yet, but I had to chime in to recommend the a cappella group Pentatonix for their gorgeous, powerful, cover of this song: https://youtu.be/LRP8d7hhpoQ?si=-nHPr_d0ZOIWArzW!