I have had so many thoughts about Leonard Cohen's beautiful song “Hallelujah.” I love the song, both the lyrics and music. But, what does it mean? It is misinterpreted and why? And, why is the song so popular?
Some music historians consider Cohen’s “Hallelujah” the most misunderstood song in pop culture history. Undoubtedly, the song contains a marriage of sly wit and naked emotion. Maybe the enigma associated with the song stems from this lyrical complexity. Nothing about it really leads you to conclude that it would go on to become one of pop music’s most durable compositions.
(Luke Buckmaster. “Why Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is the most misunderstood song in pop culture history.” Daily Review. Australia. November 13, 2016.)
“Hallelujah” clearly invites differing interpretations. Its lyrics are full of stark biblical imagery. The verses work through a vivid cinematic juxtaposition, and the meaning is formed not from a single image but from a combination of many.
Many are quick to judge the ways that “Hallelujah” has been “misunderstood” or “misinterpreted.” People hear the words of the song, apply them to their own understandings, and feel they grasp the songwriter's intentions. With this song in particular, they feel the need to identify with the character in the verses.
Has the mainstream popularity led to the song losing much of its meaning simply through overuse and crass commercialization? The song now shows up at weddings and funerals. Its included in many movies – even schmaltzy films that seem to milk the content for oversentimental emotion. People have even named their children after the song. Cohen himself once said, “I think it’s a good song, but too many people sing it” – before amending that and adding, “on second thought, no, I’m very happy that it’s being sung.”
(Alan Light. “Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”: Music’s Greatest Work in Progress.” Pitchfork. November 11, 2016.)
Evidently many people do object to certain inclusions of the song. After it was performed at a COVID-19 memorial in January 2021, Jewish fans pleaded for “Hallelujah” to no longer be played at memorials and other somber events because of the ballad's sexual lyrics
And, this plea came just months after the song was played at the Republican National Convention resulting in legal threats by Cohen's estate, which accused the GOP of trying to politicize the song. Cohen's estate said in a statement that it was 'surprised and dismayed' the song had been used, saying it had specifically denied the RNC's request to do so.
(Karen Ruiz. “'It's not a hymn!' Puzzled Jewish Leonard Cohen fans hit up social media to ask why Hallelujah was performed at Biden's national COVID-19 memorial when it's loaded with sexual lyrics.” Daily Mail. January 21, 2021.)
But, what did Cohen, himself, intend in a song about which he has said “There is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones, and when one looks at the world, there’s only one thing to say, and it’s hallelujah.”? Like many other artists, he was always ambiguous about what his "Hallelujah" meant. I hope this blog entry clears up a little of that ambiguity.
The Songwriter And the Song
“Hallelujah” came at a moment of emotional irony,” Cohen said in a 2012 book, “taking something that’s a celebration and playing it against itself.”
Dorian Lynskey, who writes about music, film, books and politics for publications including the Guardian, the Observer, the New Statesman, GQ, Billboard, Empire, and Mojo, said …
“The man (Cohen) knew things about life and if, you listened closely, you might learn something.
“The truth was that Cohen felt as lost as anybody. What gave his work its uncommon gravitas wasn’t that he knew the answers but that he never stopped looking. He searched for clues in bedrooms and warzones, in Jewish temples and Buddhist retreats, in Europe, Africa, Israel and Cuba. He tried to flush them out with booze and drugs and seduce them with melodies.
“And whenever he managed to painfully extract some nugget of wisdom, he would cut and polish it like a precious stone before resuming the search. Funny about himself but profoundly serious about his art, he liked to describe his songs as “investigations” into the hidden mechanics of love, sex, war, religion and death – the beautiful and terrifying truths of existence. A Leonard Cohen song is an anchor flung into a churning sea. It has the kind of weight that could save your life.”
(Dorian Lynskey. “Leonard Cohen – he knew things about life, and if you listened you could learn.” The Guardian. November 11, 2016.)
Leonard Cohen had a reputation, to put it lightly, for being dark. He is also renown for his poetic lyrics and using irony – each or which are evident in “Hallelujah.”
Speaking to the London Daily Telegraph on the subject of him being a bit of a “Negative Nelly,” Cohen once responded: “I don’t consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.”
Songwriter, singer, and author Paul Zollo gives us this insight into Cohen …
“Like Dylan, Simon, and few others, Leonard Cohen has expanded the vocabulary of the popular song into the domain of poetry. He didn't need Dylan's influence, however, to inspire his poetic approach to songwriting. He'd already written much poetry and two highly acclaimed novels by the time Dylan emerged, leading the poet Allen Ginsberg to comment, 'Dylan blew everybody's mind, except Leonard's.'"
(Paul Zollo. “LEONARD COHEN: FROM SONGWRITERS ON SONGWRITING. Leonardcohenfiles.com. LOS ANGELES. 1992.)
“Hallelujah” History
Cohen's original rendition was released as a single in Spain and the Netherlands in 1984, but got little attention in the United States. It was pretty much a commercial flop at the time.
However, very few songs have been covered by other artists so much – “Hallelujah” has been done by more than 300 other artists in virtually every genre including Willie Nelson, k.d. lang, Justin Timberlake, Bono, Brandi Carlile, Bon Jovi, Susan Boyle, Pentatonix, and Alexandra Burke – the 2008 winner of the UK version of The X Factor. After Burke’s soulful version was downloaded 105,000 times in its first day, setting a new European record, “Hallelujah” soon became a staple of TV singing shows.
John Cale (on the 1991 Cohen tribute album I’m Your Fan) and Jeff Buckley (on 1994’s Grace) both recorded iconic covers of the song.
A small number of audiophiles purchased Cale's album at first. Best-known for its appearance in the 2001 animated comedy film Shrek, Cale’s simple voice-and-piano arrangement (of “Hallelujah”) “strips away all artifice, leaving only a warm but world-weary rumination on the sacred and the profane” according to Dan Epstein, award-winning journalist who has written for Rolling Stone, MOJO, FLOOD, the LA Times, Guitar World, Revolver, eMusic, the Jewish Daily.
(Dan Epstein. “The top 50 cover versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ ranked.” Forward. June 30, 2021.)
Buckley's version version was even slower and dreamier and much more seductive than Cale's. In fact, Buckley once referred to the song as “a hallelujah to the orgasm.” And, his album including the song didn't sell well until 1997, when the artist vanished after a spontaneous evening swim in the Memphis waters of the Mississippi while awaiting his band from New York. His body was eventually found when it was caught in the wake of a passing boat some six days later. A terrible tragedy ignited mainstream interest in the song, and sales spread like wildfire.
Buckley's version is most often cited as the most influential version of “Hallelujah.” It became a hue posthumous hit, entering the charts in many countries. And, his haunting rendition was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2014.
All of this is even impressive when you consider that "Hallelujah" – one of the most critically acclaimed and frequently covered songs of the modern era – was originally stuck on side two of 1984’s Various Positions, an album that Cohen’s American record label deemed unfit for release.
When Cohen died on November 7, 2016, at the age of 82, renewed interest in “Hallelujah” vaulted Cohen's version of the song onto the Billboard Hot 100 for the very first time.
Background Of the Song
Kenneth Partridge – music and pop-culture journalist who has written for publications such as Billboard, The AV Club, Pitchfork, The Atlantic, Refinery 29, and Genius, where he is a managing editor – shares the background of the composition …
“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.
“But from the very beginning, there was something different about what would become 'Hallelujah' – a song that took five years and an estimated 80 drafts for Cohen to complete.”
(Kenneth Partridge. “The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah.'” Mental Floss. December 12, 2019.)
Five years? “He’s not one to share his struggles,” said producer John Lissauer, a member of the Grammy Hall of Fame. “If he wasn’t up to recording, if he was still working on something, then we just wouldn’t go in (the studio). But he’d never go in and act out the tormented, struggling artist.”
Leanne Ungar, who engineered Various Positions said the vision that allowed Cohen to bring the eighty written verses of “Hallelujah” down to the four that he ultimately recorded was “reaching a decision about how much to foreground the religious element of the song.”
When Cohen submitted the songs for LP, Various Positions, to Columbia in 1984, label execs didn’t hear “Hallelujah,” the opening song of Side Two, as anything special. They didn't even want to release the album. By the way, the double entendre of the album title may surprise some loyal religious “Hallelujah” listeners.
In fact, Cohen’s version of “Hallelujah” doesn’t announce itself as the chill-inducing secular hymn it’s now understood to be. (Various Positions was finally released in America on the indie label Passport in 1985.) Part of why it took Cohen five years to write the song was that he couldn’t decide how much of the Old Testament stuff to include.
“It had references to the Bible in it, although these references became more and more remote as the song went from the beginning to the end,” Cohen said. “Finally I understood that it was not necessary to refer to the Bible anymore. And I rewrote this song; this is the ‘secular’ ‘Hallelujah.’”
(Kenneth Partridge. “The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah.'” Mental Floss. December 12, 2019.)
“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.”
(Alan Light. “How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion.” Rolling Stone. Excerpted from the book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ by Alan Light with permission from Atria/Simon & Schuster. December 12, 2019.)
The Lyrics
Most fans love the chorus of the song, a simple melody and repetition of one word – you guessed it – “Hallelujah.” But, of course, its the verses where controversy enters the discussion of interpretation.
A verse-by-verse examination may be helpful.
Verse One
The very first two lines of “Hallelujah” recount King David's “secret chord,” with its special spiritual power (“And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him” – 1 Samuel 16:23). It was his musicianship that first earned David a spot in the royal court, the first step toward his rise to power and uniting the Jewish people.
Now I've heard there
was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But this first verse almost instantly undercuts its own solemnity; after offering such an inspiring image in the opening lines, Cohen remembers whom he’s speaking to, and reminds his listener that “you don’t really care for music, do you?”
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Yet, the antecedent of "you" is ambiguous as noted by many listeners: some believe it is a woman, the narrator's lover, whom the singer addresses; others think it is King David or Sampson and even a composite of the two. Whatever the pronoun reference, it seems to dump any responsibility of caring squarely in the lap of someone else. Satire by Cohen who was not noted for courting a large, popular cult of fame?
Cohen then describes in the opening verse, quite literally, the harmonic progression of the verse. Written in the key of C major, the chord progression matches lyrics from the song: "goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift": C, F, G, A minor, F.
It goes like this,
the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The
baffled king composing Hallelujah
Alan Light, author of The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah,' offers this: This is an explanation of the song’s structure followed by a reference to the conventional contrast between a major (happy) key and a minor (sad) key and finally ends with “the unknowable nature of artistic creation, or of romantic love, or of both and serves to reduce even literal musical royalty (“the baffled king”) to the role of simple craftsman.” Why “baffled”? Evidently finding the love, passion (rapture?) is a much-practiced product of the music and simple craftsmanship.
For some of the inheritors of “Hallelujah,” it is explicitly the melody that speaks most strongly – the chord progression in the song. “The way the melody is structured is quite genius,” said David Miller of the popular classical crossover group Il Divo. “It builds, it lifts, then there’s always the one word coming back down. It’s almost like sex – it builds, it builds, there’s that moment, and then the afterglow. To go on that journey, the whole thing taken as an experience, is wonderful.”
(Alan Light. “How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion.” Rolling Stone. Excerpted from the book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ by Alan Light with permission from Atria/Simon & Schuster. December 12, 2019.)
Verse Two
The first two verses of “Hallelujah” introduce both the heroic harp player King David and the Nazarite strongman Samson. In the scriptures, both David and Samson are adulterous poets whose ill-advised romances (with Bathsheba and Delilah, respectively) lead to some big problems.
The second verse of the song shifts to the second person once more – “Your faith was strong but you needed proof.” Apparently the narrator is now addressing the character who was described in the first verse, since the next lines invoke another incident in the David story, when the king discovers and is tempted by Bathsheba. (“And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon” – 2 Samuel 11:2.)
Your faith was
strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her
beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you to a kitchen
chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from
your lips she drew the Hallelujah
When it comes to David’s encounter with Bathsheba, Cohen’s David is not the initiator of wrongdoing; instead, he is a victim of forces beyond his own control.
The reversal explained? Everything happens to a passive David. These descriptions of Bathsheba are more characteristic of Delilah, who ties down Samson, cuts his hair, and steals his power. David’s experiences, according to Cohen’s song, were marked by various kinds of “hallelujahs” – some cold, some broken, some holy – a nontraditional way of understanding praise.
NOTE: “Hallelujah” as it exists on Various Positions is both opaque and direct. Each verse ends with the word that gives the song its title, which is then repeated four times, giving the song its signature prayer-like incantation.
The word hallelujah has slightly different implications in the Old and New Testaments. In the Hebrew Bible, it is a compound word, from hallelu, meaning “to praise joyously,” and yah, a shortened form of the unspoken name of God. So this “hallelujah” is an active imperative, an instruction to the listener or congregation to sing tribute to the Lord … The most dramatic use of “hallelujah” in the New Testament is as the keynote of the song sung by the great multitude in heaven in Revelation, celebrating God’s triumph over the Whore of Babylon.
(Alan Light. “How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion.” Rolling Stone. Excerpted from the book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ by Alan Light with permission from Atria/Simon & Schuster. December 12, 2019.)
According to Harry Freedman, author of Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius which is an analysis of Cohen’s work, Cohen suffered from depression and would have identified strongly with David, a fellow musician.
(Donna Ferguson. “How Leonard Cohen mined sacred texts for lyrics to his songs.” The Guardian. October 17, 2021.)
Verse Three
You say I took the
name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well
really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every
word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken
hallelujah
In the third verse, Cohen grapples with the question of spirituality. When he’s accused of taking the Lord’s name in vain, Cohen deadpans, hilariously, “What’s it to ya?” offering a rebuttal to the religious challenge presented in the previous lines.
He then builds to the song’s central premise – the value, even the necessity of the song of praise in the face of confusion, doubt, or dread. “There’s a blaze of light in every word; / it doesn’t matter which you heard, / the holy, or the broken Hallelujah!”
(Alan Light. “How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion.” Rolling Stone. Excerpted from the book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ by Alan Light with permission from Atria/Simon & Schuster. December 12, 2019.)
There is evident desperation and confusion in the voice of the narrator. Accused of blaspheming, his response indicates a sense of loss and removal. “But if I did” … does it matter? What is the difference between a “holy” and a “broken” hallelujah?
Cohen through narration insists there’s “a blaze of light in every word” – every perception of the divine, perhaps – and declares there to be no difference between “the holy or the broken Hallelujah.” Both have value. Cohen is telling us, without resorting to sentimentality, not to surrender to despair or nihilism.
Verse Four
I did my best, it
wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve
told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all
went wrong
I’ll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on
my tongue but hallelujah
Cohen’s 1984 recording ends with a verse that begins, “I did my best / It wasn’t much.” It’s the humble shrug of a mortal man and the sly admission of an ambitious songwriter trying to capture the essence of humanity in a pop song.
By the final lines, Cohen concedes “it all went wrong,” but promises to have nothing but gratitude and joy for everything he has experienced. He reinforces his fallibility, his limits, but also his good intentions, singing, “I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.”
According to Michael Chan – Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, MN; and a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University (BA), Luther Seminary (MA in Old Testament), and Emory University (PhD) – the song’s switch to first-person speech (“I did my best, it wasn’t much. I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch”) in the last verse makes the song feel more like a personal confession wrapped in a powerful narrative than a simple retelling of the famous king’s life.
(Michael J. Chan. "Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”" The Bible Odyssey. 2021.)
“Hallelujah” was, in fact, inspired by a positive feeling. “It’s a rather joyous song,” Cohen said when Various Positions was released. “I like very much the last verse – ‘And even though it all went wrong, / I’ll stand before the Lord of Song / with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah!’ ”
Theme
Regarding the meaning of the song, Leonard Cohen said:
“This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can… reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.'
“The song explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist, and all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value. It’s a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion.”
(Francesco Agrelli. “Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah: the meaning of the lyrics.” Aurelcrave. January 19, 2020.)
“There’s no solution to this mess,” Cohen once said, describing the human comedy at the heart of “Hallelujah.” He continued …
“The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say 'Look, I don't understand a f***ing thing at all—Hallelujah! That's the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.”
(Kenneth Partridge. “The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah.'” Mental Floss. December 12, 2019.)
“For Cohen, there is no conflict between popular culture and profound thinking, and no difference between Judaism and Christianity, says Harry Freedman author of Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius. “He sees them as all part of the same thing.”
Sex and religion are also often closely intertwined in his songs: “In the Kabbalah, sex and procreation are holy acts. They symbolize the union of human and divine.” In one version of “Hallelujah” Cohen wrote, “I moved in you, and the holy dove she was moving too, and every single breath we drew was Hallelujah.”
(Donna Ferguson. “How Leonard Cohen mined sacred texts for lyrics to his songs.” The Guardian. October 17, 2021.)
Music and pop-culture journalist Kenneth Partridge even suggests to touch the depths of both longing and terror that Cohen reaches in "Hallelujah" is not a place most people want to visit. The solace a song can offer becomes more appealing instead. 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.
(Kenneth Partridge. “The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah.'” Mental Floss. December 12, 2019.)
Be it an imperative to praise the Lord or an expression of joy, “Hallelujah” allows us to find beauty amid sadness and move forward. And, in truth, every breath can be a welcome hallelujah. In the process of drawing these breaths, Cohen advises us to remember that “love is not “a victory march” but rather an exercise full of humility, sacrifice, and service. And, above all, Cohen says …
It doesn’t matter
which you heard
The holy or the broken hallelujah
That, to me, requires the choir to reply in unison praise … “Amen!”
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