Stop treating it as some kind of fucking hymn! It’s just another break-up song, which has this churchy word in it, used as a kind of lament for how great the sex was but she was a bitch in the end. It’s a pretty song, Cohen could turn out a catchy, mournful, mysterious song about a twisted relationship with a woman to match the best of them, but that doesn’t make it religious, or an anthem to anything but how fucked up romantic relationships can be.
I don’t expect anyone else to be even disturbed by this endless-covers-of-Hallelujah phenomenon much less to be gnashing their teeth but I had to put it somewhere.
I saw the documentary Leonard and Marianne: Words of Love. I wish I hadn’t. He was an overpriviledged, self-indulging userof prople. Drugs, alcohol, sex, unreliable for the people in his life. A stereotypical rock star.
I happen to have some information that his email address began with “baldymonk”
Also, on his death certificate, his profession was listed as “poet”.
These are things I like.
Oh, and he had a really crazy stalker/former manager who stole from him and then harassed him mercilessly, which is what forced him to tour in his later years.
Yes, he was a self-indulgent jerk (so are millions of people who have not written any good songs), and was also a serious practicing student of zen buddhism much of his later adult life. He was a great song writer (not much of a singer). I can’t in honesty blame him for what happened to this one song he wrote. It’s a lot like many other songs he wrote. Why it was picked up and made into some kind of Christian anthem I can’t fathom except that people are unremittingly stupid and don’t care what the lyrics are. I’m sure Cohen is having a chuckle about it in whatever his reincarnated form is these days.
Yes, the song is about a breakup and not a hymn. And I can understand getting tired of so many covers of it–especially since there is so little variation in most of them from the original cover (though none sound like Cohen’s original).
However, I argue the song is also explicitly religious. It does not merely use a single religious word, but refers to a biblical story–that of David and Bathsheba–and relates the breakup to that story. It seems that Cohen is using his religious background as as way to express how this breakup has made him feel. And, in doing so, he winds up indirectly exploring how David may have felt–the grief he had not when Bathsheba left him (as she didn’t) but as his first child with her died in his arms.
Maybe that last bit is a slight stretch, and most people probably don’t think of it that way. It only works as an allusion, as the text is still clearly about a break up. But the rest, about how it relates it to a religious story, I think qualifies it as a religious song. It’s just not the typical “God is great. Rah rah rah!” song. Not a hymn, but religiously informed.
Of course, I think most people just like it because it sounds pretty when sung by people who are great singers, which Cohen emphatically claimed he was not. (Video link, but it’s short. And, if you’re pressed for time, the title plus the fact it was reported by the BBC is sufficient.)
not just the lyrics are bad…its the rhyming.
Terrible, terrible rhymes.
The word “hallelujah” rhymes with “do ya”—sort of.
Well, not really.
Maybe I could forgive it…once.
But repeating it four times makes me want to scream.
“Do ya”
“overthrew ya”
“What’s it to ya”
“fool ya”
It makes me want to yell “Hallel-YOU-YA”!!! the song is finally over!"
The word “hallelujah” is for serious poetry.
The word “Ya” is for baby talk.
I liked Swayze, he seemed like a decent guy and had some good performances on screen. He gets a pass from me forever for Roadhouse alone (which while not a great or even good movie is iconic). That and the SNL sketch where he danced against Chris Farley in a Chippendale competition. Dancer, martial artist, singer-songwriter and actor, extremely talented. And I like the sentiment behind the song. But I can’t stand it.
Do you also hate George Michael and that other guy because of the idiots who think that “Last Christmas” is a carol? Police for the morons who are still convinced that “Every breath you take” is romantic?
It ain’t the songwriter’s fault if people don’t wash their ears…