{"id":10976,"date":"2015-11-09T10:19:10","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T15:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=10976"},"modified":"2015-11-09T13:04:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T18:04:38","slug":"a-totally-personal-hallelujah-covering-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2015\/11\/a-totally-personal-hallelujah-covering-cohen.html","title":{"rendered":"A Totally Personal Hallelujah: Covering Cohen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"leonard<\/a>
\nLeonard Cohen says he spent a couple of years working on what would become his masterwork Hallelujah. He estimates he wrote about eighty verses, while trying to find the right ones. The song was originally released on the album Various Positions, and he publicly performed it first as part of the 1985 tour in support of that album. However, within three years he was singing a different version with almost no overlap in the verses. <\/p>\n

It appears there wasn\u2019t a lot of initial response. Although Bob Dylan covered it for live performance, he never recorded it. The linage of success seems to start when John Cale covered it in 1991, which inspired Jeff Buckley\u2019s famous 1994 cover included in his album Grace. Zach Schonfeld & Sean Elder in their Newsweek essay 60 Versions of Leonard Cohen\u2019s Hallelujah, Ranked<\/a>, write \u201cSo many of the song\u2019s fans believe Buckley wrote \u2018Hallelujah,\u2019 and he may as well have, in a sense: He reimagined it in remarkable ways and brought it to popular light, even if he never lived to see the effect. Buckley\u2019s unforgettable recording, which serves as the centerpiece of 1994\u2019s Grace, opens with a literal exhale and closes with Buckley dragging out the titular exultation for 10 soaring seconds. In between, the singer deconstruct\u2019s Cohen\u2019s song as a trembling, achingly raw solo performance set to lilting electric guitar figures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apparently this opened the floodgates. According to the Wikipedia article on the song there are over three hundred versions recorded in several languages. And, probably counting. I gather it has become a standard among those amateur singer television shows. In 2012 Alan Light did a book length study of the song, \u201cThe Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of \u2018Hallelujah'\u201d<\/p>\n

The original version of the song is replete with Biblical references, and Christians have leaped in to clean up the ambiguous spirituality that cuts through Cohen\u2019s versions, none I\u2019m aware of to any particular success. And of those I\u2019ve heard, none deserved any. But, really, who am I to say? Cohen himself suggests \u201cmany different hallelujah\u2019s exist.\u201d True that. Some no doubt will be superficial, others deeply intimate. Really, this song is ultimately totally personal. So, it should be sung in all the different voices.<\/p>\n

Digging into this point the Wikipedia article, itself citing a BBC Radio documentary, notes those \u201cwide-ranging covers with very different intents or tones, allowing the song to be \u2018melancholic, fragile, uplifting [or] joyous\u2019 depending on the performer: The Welsh singer-songwriter John Cale, the first person to record a cover version of the song (in 1991), promoted a message of \u2018soberness and sincerity\u2019 in contrast to Cohen\u2019s dispassionate tone; The cover by Jeff Buckley, an American singer-songwriter, is more sorrowful and was described by Buckley as \u2018a hallelujah to the orgasm;\u2019 Crowe interpreted the song as a \u2018very sexual\u2019 composition that discussed relationships; Wainwright offered a \u2018purifying and almost liturgical\u2019 interpretation; and Guy Garvey of the British band Elbow made the hallelujah a \u2018stately creature\u2019 and incorporated his religious interpretation of the song into his band\u2019s recordings.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, of course, if, as I find it, the song touches the deeper parts of our hearts, we will each of us respond differently. Totally personal.<\/p>\n

For me the song with its religious themes of loss, its honest and sometimes sad sexuality, speaks to the mystery and possibility of our lives. For the most part I feel it should be sung by someone old, although I\u2019ve recently come to feel it also belongs to youth, particularly when one is still exploring, feeling, trying to find an identity. <\/p>\n

Schonfeld and Elder\u2019s delightful essay 60 Versions of Leonard Cohen\u2019s Hallelujah, Ranked<\/a>, which inspired this little meditation, suggests Cohen\u2019s versions are not the best interpretations of the song, they rank his 1984 original recording only number eight on their list. They make some good arguments. But, for me, again, age tends to trump for this song, and its those versions he has regaled us with on his last couple of tours where he has been trying to financially recover from the theft of his life savings while he was in a five year Zen retreat, that move me most. <\/p>\n

Love, loss, looking into the abyss of old age and death, and still, finding a mysterious joy at the center of it all.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I hear.<\/p>\n