Cohen recorded four verses but sent several more to John Cale when Cale recorded Hallelujah for a 1991 tribute album. The song’s malleability is one key to its success, Light said. It is played at weddings, funerals, school concerts and all manner of religious services, the chorus lifting it into the realm of the spiritual. Musically (and Cohen’s lyrics even describe the melody), the verses build slowly to a release in the chorus, which is simply the title word repeated four times.Ĭohen saw his composition as joyous, yet its placement on ER, The West Wing, House and many other TV and movie soundtracks has become a nearly universal signal of a sad moment.
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah.” The author’s droll humour is present throughout in lines like “you don’t really care for music, do you?” Some of those hallelujah moments are clearly sexual, given a lyric like “she tied you to a kitchen chair. The song has Biblical references, but Cohen’s stated goal was to give a non-religious context to hallelujah, an expression of praise. “At a time when everything has fragmented so dramatically, it’s sort of heartening to see that this song can connect as universally as it did,” Light said.Ĭohen laboured over Hallelujah, filling a notebook with some 80 verses before recording. His curiosity led him to write The Holy or the Broken, about the song’s trajectory, about Cohen and about its most celebrated singer, the late Jeff Buckley. Since then, through dozens of cover versions, high-profile performances and appearances on TV or movie soundtracks, Hallelujah has become a modern standard.Īuthor Alan Light reflected upon that while at Yom Kippur services in Manhattan two years ago, as he saw congregants in tears when the choir sang Hallelujah.
Virtually no one noticed when the song did come out on an independent label. Recorded in 1984, it was on the only Cohen album rejected by his record company. NEW YORK - It’s hard to think of any song that has taken a stranger journey through popular culture than Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
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