I hate Leonard Cohen now.

[drad_dog]

@septimus

Leonard Cohen is dead? Why wasn’t I informed?! I think he’s a great writer; some of his lyrics feed my nostalgia for my misspent youth. (But I heartily boo the Doper who suggested Cohen should have got the Nobel Prize instead of Dylan!)

I assume Cohen understood that actually singing wasn’t his strength; is he mocking himself with this lyric?

I heard him on Fresh Air once. He equivocated kind of. He said he knew what his voice sounded like but in his heart of hearts he thinks very highly of it.

[outlierrn]

To me, it draws a parallel between an early, enthusiastic, possibly naïve spirituality and romantic love, both of which wither in the real world. I like the Buckley and Pentatonix versions, but concur that it’s not a Christmas song. Then again, Pentatonix released God Only Knows as a Christmas song this year. A nice track, IMHO, but I don’t see the connection.

[Malleus_Incus_Stapes]

@ZipperJJ

I don’t know how often it gets played there, but I heard it once at my brother’s church at the Easter Vigil (Catholic church, night before Easter). Of course, the lyrics were changed but the chorus was not. My brother and I were pretty shocked, and so was mom once we told her to check out the original song.

Well changed lyrics are a different thing. I mean, there’s a Jewish version, too, set to the words of the shabbat hymn “Lecha Dodi”.

[Inner_Stickler]

A breakup song? A christmas song? Hallelujah is very clearly to me a song about the pain of the inevitability of praising god. You can do it from the start like a good boy or fuck up, sin and have to crawl on your knees for forgiveness anyway. No matter what you do, god still pulls the hallelujah from your lips.

An incredibly sad song, I think.

[elucidator]

Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God said, “No” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’, you better run”
Well, Abe said, “Where d’you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61”

• St. Robert of Hibbing

[EinsteinsHund]

@elucidator

Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God said, “No” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’, you better run”
Well, Abe said, “Where d’you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61”

• St. Robert of Hibbing

Surely a religious song, if not a hymn. Was there ever a hymn without a whistle?

[RTFirefly]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

There are seriously people who think “Hallelujah” is a religious song???

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Yes, I rather think it is. Maybe it’s because IMHO the best religious songs aren’t inright outright upright downright happy all the time, or beautiful songs of praise to the Lord (which is what people seem to expect of a religious song), but meet you in the places where it isn’t anywhere close to easy (which is what Cohen’s songs tend to do), Cohen’s songs don’t strike a lot of people as being religious. But for my money, “Bird on a Wire,” let alone “Hallelujah,” reaches to much deeper places in my Christian soul than “Amazing Grace” does.

Also what Inner Stickler said.

[ivylass]

The first time I heard this song was when it was used on an episode of West Wing. CJ is stumbling down the streets of New York City after Simon got shot (let’s not even go into how a Secret Service guy got gunned down in a bodega. No how, no way he wouldn’t have cleared that shop before trying to buy that rose or whatever for CJ.) I found it a hauntingly beautiful rendition and I actually forgot to breathe for a few seconds.

[Kropotkin]

I think one reason everybody covers this song is it is an interesting song to sing and lets weaker singers sound stronger and more complex.

[dropzone]

And the goal of that is to get the singer laid. . “Ooh! He’s deep! I must sleep.with him.”

[JRDelirious]

Cultural referents from the author’s or the society’s religious tradition are legit components in artistic creation that do not have to make the work itself necessarily “religious” in the sense of supporting one brand or another of supernatural spirituality or theology.

But they do inform the work – we know Bathsheba and Delilah are symbols for “love will ruin you” because we recognize them from JudeoChristian myth. And you know that in the peak of passion or in the pit of despair you may cry out “Oh God!” or an equivalent phrase, because of cultural conditioning, even if not a committed believer.

OTOH, not reading/listening for comprehension can lead to inappropriate use of the material, like in the “inspirational” use of *Hallelujah *or the aforementioned “patriotic” Born in the USA, and then if you point out they’re getting it wrong they tell you you’re being some sort of sourpuss.

And yeah, fer cryin’ out loud, it’s not a Christmas song. Then again if *Die Hard *is a Christmas movie…
Meanwhile, eh, so ol’ Leonard is another entry in the honored list of brilliant creators who were putzes in the personal plane – I don’t have to live with them, I’ll enjoy the work. FWIW I really like K.D. Lang’s version from the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

@Folacin

@ZipperJJ

I don’t know how often it gets played there, but I heard it once at my brother’s church at the Easter Vigil (Catholic church, night before Easter). Of course, the lyrics were changed but the chorus was not. My brother and I were pretty shocked, and so was mom once we told her to check out the original song.

You know that there is a long tradition of reusing music with new lyrics, right? For instance *Greensleeves *which is about the village girl everyone knows (or alternatively the creepy village stalker) became What Child is This?.

Oh yeah, THAT… that is another story altogether. But be glad y’all at least are within the same general culture and recognize the transposition. I have yet to hear a Spanish-language version of Cohen’s Hallellujah that is not overtly Religious. And there’s millions of Latin American Catholics who for a generation now have grown up hearing the Lord’s Prayer part of Mass sung to the tune of S&G’s* The Sound of Silence*, which as far as I’m concerned is just wrong in both directions.

[JohnBckWLD]

@The_King_of_Soup

Listen to Judy Collins sing “Suzanne” and relax.

If that doesn’t work, listen to Van Ronk sing “Bird on a Wire” and count your Cohen blessings.

[RTFirefly]

@JRDelirious

Meanwhile, eh, so ol’ Leonard is another entry in the honored list of brilliant creators who were putzes in the personal plane

I’m sure there have been some trailblazing artistic types who were genuinely decent people in their personal lives, but it sure does seem like that list would be considerably shorter.

[elucidator]

@dropzone

And the goal of that is to get the singer laid. . “Ooh! He’s deep! I must sleep.with him.”

Wait. That works?

[TruCelt]

I have always hated this song, and Cohen for writing it. I hate it because the chord progression is overtly manipulative. The human mind can’t help responding to it. Cohen even admits it in the lyrics “It goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift . . .” He knows exactly what he is doing. He probably needed money at the time and so decided to use his music theory knowledge to compose a sure-fire hit.

As for whether it is a Christmas song? I say yes. Yes it is. It is the Christmas anthem of newly divorced alcoholics; they deserve a song too.

[RTFirefly]

@TruCelt

I have always hated this song, and Cohen for writing it. I hate it because the chord progression is overtly manipulative. The human mind can’t help responding to it. Cohen even admits it in the lyrics “It goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift . . .” He knows exactly what he is doing. He probably needed money at the time and so decided to use his music theory knowledge to compose a sure-fire hit.

The New Yorker piece that was linked to upthread seems to say he didn’t have that much formal music training:

Cohen was also taken with music. As a kid, he had learned the songs in the old lefty folk compendium “The People’s Song Book,” listened to Hank Williams and other country singers on the radio, and, at sixteen, dressed in his father’s old suède jacket, he played in a country-music combo called the Buckskin Boys.

He took some informal guitar lessons in his twenties from a Spaniard he met next to a local tennis court. After a few weeks, he picked up a flamenco chord progression. When the man failed to appear for their fourth lesson, Cohen called his landlady and learned that the man had killed himself. In a speech many years later, in Asturias, Cohen said, “I knew nothing about the man, why he came to Montreal . . . why he appeared at that tennis court, why he took his life. . . . It was those six chords, it was that guitar pattern, that has been the basis of all my songs, and all my music.”

And even if he did have more musical training and knowledge of music theory than the article suggests:

If it was that easy, if a knowledge of music theory could teach people to write powerful (if emotionally manipulative) melodies - as someone who happens to think this is a great song, how come there aren’t a lot more songs that are good in the way this one is??

I think it’s bullshit. It’s not that easy to compose a ‘sure-fire hit,’ and incidentally, this song wasn’t. Cohen released the song in 1984 to little acclaim; nobody covered it until 1991. And it didn’t really become the big deal it’s become until its use in the Shrek soundtrack in 2001.

[TruCelt]

@RTFirefly

. . . Cohen released the song in 1984 to little acclaim; nobody covered it until 1991. And it didn’t really become the big deal it’s become until its use in the Shrek soundtrack in 2001.

Right. Because it is emotionally manipulative. The same reason so many of us avoid Hallmark Christmas movies. Some folks enjoy the emotional release and just let themselves go. Most of us don’t like it.

Anyone who spends any time at all with music learns these things about chord progression. And Cohen was a crass, cynical and manipulative guy. I’m having no trouble at all believing that he did it purposefully. Especially since he laid it all out in the lyrics.

[RTFirefly]

@TruCelt

Right. Because it is emotionally manipulative. The same reason so many of us avoid Hallmark Christmas movies. Some folks enjoy the emotional release and just let themselves go. Most of us don’t like it.

Anyone who spends any time at all with music learns these things about chord progression. And Cohen was a crass, cynical and manipulative guy. I’m having no trouble at all believing that he did it purposefully. Especially since he laid it all out in the lyrics.

He knows exactly what he is doing. He probably needed money at the time and so decided to use his music theory knowledge to compose a sure-fire hit.

You’re taking both sides (maybe more) of an argument with yourself. (1) It was a sure-fire hit because it was emotionally manipulative (by intention). (2) But then it wasn’t a hit because it was emotionally manipulative. But then I guess (3) it became a Big Deal later on because it was emotionally manipulative, amirite?

I’m gonna step out now. I’ll check back in a few days to see which one of your selves wins the argument.

[EinsteinsHund]

Anyway it’s ridiculous to accuse a popular songwriter of manipulation for using agreeable chords. That’s the whole point of pop music.

[Mama_Zappa]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

There are seriously people who think “Hallelujah” is a religious song???

EDIT: Wait, you’re hearing it on Christmas stations or something?

It ISN’T???

Next you’re gonna tell me this oneisn’t either! It’s all about Jesus, right?

My dislike of the tune is that it is so overused in movies and TV. What’s frustrating is that the melody is truly lovely and haunting.