I think the claim that Buckley's version of Hallelujah is better than Cohen's (even the initial 1984 version) is controversial, at minimum :-)
The observations about obscurity are good ones, however -- A Confederacy of Dunces is a fantastic book, and it's hard to say how many other fantastic works of music, literature, &c. are lost in closets and old laptop hard drives. But I think it's not as much about genius as the author seems to think: given that we don't actually know the denominator under "known great works to unknown great ones," it seems equally plausible to me that "genius" is not the rare or distinguishing thing we always treat it as.
At one point in my music library, I not-quite-dated a woman who's fond of the song ... and I picked up a few versions of it in my music library. There was also a version playing on KFOG at the time.
One of the things that interesting to me about them is that John Cale did a cover of the Cohen song ... and then everyone else covers Cale's version.
I think that Rufus Wainright's version is the closest to Cale's and The Rubes have a version that is more piano.
In a quick scan through iTunes, I haven't found any (yet) that use Cohen's lyrical arrangement rather than Cale's selection.
(edit) Matthew Schuler appears to be a proper Cohen cover (complete with the female backup voices on the Hallelujah choruses over organ). It has the "Lord of Song" verse, but it didn't have the "holy or the broken Hallelujah" verse.
The Canadian Tenors also have a composition that appears to draw from the Cohen rather than the Cale arrangement.
Tori Kelly's cover has all the verses that I recognize from Cohen's version.
This is a major point made by the article. Cohen needed Cale to be his "editor", someone that could beat it into shape. Without Cale's "editing", we probably would not have all the covers today. The article then contrasts this process to what happens an author is unlucky and is faced with an editor who stands in the way of the author's vision rather than becoming a catalyst for it.
> Shortly after Shrek's success, Cale ran into Cohen at a Starbucks in Hollywood, where the two had consequently relocated. "I said, 'Well, I guess we did a good thing there,'" Cale recalls of the meeting. "I asked him, 'How many versions of 'Hallelujah' are there? How many can there be?' He said, 'Well, it's all your fault, you know.' And I said, 'Oh no, everybody's found something great in it because every verse has a different aspect of somebody's character.' I then told him I couldn't sing some of them because they were too religious for me, and he said, 'Yeah, you take what you find useful.'"
I will suggest listening to the Matthew Schuler cover - https://youtu.be/r6KrhD8Ts7c and see how it was inspired by Cohen's version rather than Cale's version (and Schuler's background as a church choir singer is there rather than a singer songwriter background).
What was it about Cale’s version that Jeff Buckley latched on to that he wouldn’t have had he come across Cohen’s version while cat sitting for a friend? Do we know? I don’t think the author explains (if there even is an explanation).
> the claim that Buckley's version of Hallelujah is better than Cohen's (even the initial 1984 version) is controversial, at minimum :-)
It is controversial, but shouldn't be. Not because Buckley's version _is_ better, but because arguing over whose taste in music is better is obnoxious.
Buckley's version is trash in my opinion. I've just listened to the official video on YourTube. I had to give up halfway through and switch to Leonard Cohen's version Live in London. Cohen sings it like it matters, like it's a matter of life and death. Moved me to tears.
It’s apples and oranges comparing a studio recording to a live performance.
Anyway, I think this is a similar divide to the performances of ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash. People come to each with their own preconceptions and their own taste, and ultimately both tracks explore different ground and express different things through the same composition.
It is all a matter of taste; for what it’s worth, I think no one has to think something is good, but I have a lot of time for people whose sense of taste lets them explore the ground that the artist tries to take them to and understand the artist on their level, whether they think one particular performance is better or worse than another by some metric.
One of my favorite Cash songs is The Mercy Seat, I just think it’s a masterpiece. And it’s SO Johnny Cash (religion! crime! last line twist!) that I was stunned when I recently looked it up and realized he didn’t write it, it’s a cover of a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds song. The Nick Cave version is… fine? I mean, it’s good! But the Johnny Cash version is sublime, there’s no comparison.
Must have been a weird feeling for an artist to hear Johnny Cash is covering your song. On the one hand, he’s a legend who inspired you and who you worship, but also it has to be a bit of “oh shit, his version is going to be so much better than mine, isn’t it? Well, I guess it’s Johnny’s song now. ”
> Must have been a weird feeling for an artist to hear Johnny Cash is covering your song. On the one hand, he’s a legend who inspired you and who you worship, but also it has to be a bit of “oh shit, his version is going to be so much better than mine, isn’t it? Well, I guess it’s Johnny’s song now. ”
Pff.
Based on monthly listeners on Spotify Johnny Cash is bigger than both Nice Cave and Nine Inch Nails. So what kind of position do you put artists who are both less known and younger in when you cover their songs? Well factoring in respect and professionalism: deference is a likely outcome. “It’s his song now!” Ridiculous.
“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails is fine I guess. “Hurt” by Cash is just an old man voice over a steel string guitar. Very monotone and dull. I heard it way before I heard the NiN version (naturally) and I never understood why people were taken by it.
Another example is “My Body is a Cage” by Arcade Fire. Peter Gabriel did a similarly boring cover: flat vocals (compare with the AF vocals reaching for the higher notes) over a dun-dun-dun piano which builds into a orchestral backing. I guess the instrumentation is comparable but the vocals are just okay. But the vocals are supposedly the wow-factor for such artists.
But AF has done at least one Peter Gabriel cover. So it goes both ways.
To me, cover songs often fall flat because it sounds like the cover artist is just reading someone else's lines as opposed to having a distinct voice.
For me, Cale's version sounds "lived in", if you will. He's taken the words and made them his. There's bitterness, hurt, humour, and real meaning imbued in each line. It's not elegant, it's a bit rough and raw. I think Cale is an underrated vocalist.
Other cover versions like Buckley's sound technically very proficient but slick and emotionally hollow.
The hairs on my back of my neck always stand up when I hear I Keep A Close Watch (especially the M:FANS version [1], but the original Helen of Troy version is also great [2] and there's plenty of wonderful live versions).
The thing about Nine Inch Nails version of 'Hurt' is that it works best within the context of the album 'The Downward Spiral'. As a song by itself it's fine, but it doesn't really hit home unless you've been through the entire journey that the album takes you on. It segues right from the album's title track and maintains the noisy crackling from that song, making it feel incredibly fragile. It's a great way to cap off a very personal and self-reflective album, but take it out of that context and it's just, eh, pretty good I guess.
Johnny Cash's version takes the song and puts it into a new context, specifically as a reflection on Cash's own life and career. It hits very differently that way, and I think it's easier for people to relate to. Both versions are excellent in their own way, and I am grateful to Johnny Cash for bringing this song into the public consciousness.
Seems like an extreme take. I think Buckley’s version is sublime but love Cohen’s too (which I’ve been privileged to enjoy live on a couple occasions).
I think this is the 'It's either 5-stars or 1-star' principle in action. I feel given a different context they might say that both both renditions are good but one speaks to them on a more personal level.
I'm guessing this comes about as a desire to be heard causing a magnification of the opinion rather than the force of the opinion. If you feel like nobody takes notice of your moderate opinion one might feel like a expressing stronger opinion in the same direction might increase the impact.
I also just don't care for Buckley's cover, and it's not a "not quite as good as the other one" feeling but a "not good" impression, so I can see where GGP is coming from. Buckley needlessly draws out the song.
I own both Cohen's track from Various Positions and Buckley's cover from Grace, which Google gave away for free to try to convince people to use its music store. I don't listen to the latter. Even if I didn't have the former, I still wouldn't listen to the latter. That's just how I feel about it, and I understand that other people feel differently.
I think it's a matter of taste. I just watched your link and it seems performative to me. I imagine a video from one of his earliest performances would have come off as authentic. But decades later, does he really even feel the same way as when he wrote it?
As someone who has performed a number of songs (some of which I wrote) over several decades, and has played one cover song in particular at least several hundred times... every performance is unique.
It is a different experience for the performer than for the audience. As an audience member, I get tired of any particular song very quickly. As a performer, it often feels like a new challenge each time. One night I can struggle to feel anything at all and it's like I'm phoning it in. The next afternoon I can come away from a spontaneous run-through of the same piece and feel like I've found new insights and played it better than ever before.
That being said, while I recognize it's somewhat subjective, I vastly prefer Jeff Buckley's version of this song over all others. Maybe because I fell in love with that whole Grace album at a pivotal point in my life. If I'm going to pick a song I feel like Cohen fully owns, it's gotta be Everybody Knows.
One thing I really like about Buckley's version is that he says "But you don't really care for music, do you?" Not "do ya", which really jars with the rest of the song.
Seems a little unfair on Yetnikoff and Gottlieb. There are potentially a whole heap of songs and books that are _potentially_ better than both Hallelujah and A Confederacy of Dunces; but they are undiscovered, and most will remain that way. It seems unfair that the author of the piece, with super-duper hindsight and a firm hand on the survivor bias handle, picks two survivors and then ridicules the editor and reviewer who didn't see precisely what everybody else didn't see either. Seems a bit of a cheap shot.
That's not what I understood the author's point to be. Rather, they suggest that genius isn't enough; a large part is luck, timing, having the right mentors and chanpions — and in these two cases, the works became successful in spite of everything. As they point out in the last paragraphs, many works of genius are probably lost because the stars don't align.
You're right in all of that. There's a gross underestimation of the importance of the hand of feckless fortune in the success, or otherwise, of many endeavors - even in the lives of persons who aren't aiming for literary or musical fame, but simply for some marginal gain that advances their lot.
I'm dealing with this right now. My wife was killed by a Russian tank in January while rescuing two wounded soldiers, and she left behind a whole trove of her writings. I've compiled everything into a book, and everyone who takes the time to read it agrees that what she wrote is amazing, moving, heartbreaking - but I cannot for love nor money get the damn thing published.
Here's an example:
=== May 26, 2023 20:33
I worked in Dnipro last year in October and November as first responder for missile strikes (kamikaze drones weren’t a big issue yet in Dnipro at that time, missiles were the main threat), and therefore any news and pictures of an attack there feel very personal to me. They’re not just another headline about another strike to me, but bring back memories from the strikes that I responded to myself and the experiences I made.
Coming from these experiences, let me remind you, or make you aware, that these attacks cause much more harm than what you see on the news pictures or that the numbers show of how many people died or are hospitalized or how many buildings got destroyed.
For example, last year I rescued (‘found cowering on the ground’ would be more fitting in this case actually) a young woman who was close-ish to a half collapsed and burning gas station that was hit by a missile. She had a wound from a piece of shrapnel on her hand, that was all. It wasn’t serious, no bones, nerves, ligaments etc. were damaged, a case for a bandage as first aid and later a few stitches in the hospital. She didn’t even have a serious concussion as far as I could tell on the spot, apparently, luckily, she was still far enough away from the impact for it to cause her any serious physical damage. But she was severely in shock, I mean psychological shock. She looked at me like… I don’t even know how to describe this but I’ll never forget this look in her eyes… like in complete disbelief of what just happened or confusion about what happened, mixed with deep sadness, mixed with fear for her life. Something like this. She was traumatized, and the same applied to everybody who was there when it happened, no matter whether or not they had physical injuries.
Another time we were searching a damaged building right next to a partially destroyed building (from a missile strike). It was basically still intact, 'only’ blown out windows and smaller damage like that from the shockwave and from shrapnel /secondary shrapnel flying around, but no collapsed walls or other visible damage that would affect the building’s structural integrity. “Searching” in this case means we had to check on every single person living there if they need medical help, and/or enter every single apartment, if necessary by force, to see if anybody is there who needs assistance. Everybody in this building was 'fine’, there were no dead, no injured (beyond a few scratches or minor cuts from window glass), no unattended frightened children or elderly, nobody who would’ve needed our help, aside from a bandaid or a piece of candy (for the kids) here and there. These people wouldn’t show up in any statistics that you see on the news, they’re the 'lucky’ ones, but if you talk to them in person there’s no doubt that they’re also direct victims of this missile strike. - If you talk to people later who have experienced something like this, they’ll tell you that their children are deadly afraid of all kinds of banging sounds and of the air raid alert sirens, they run to the hallway (if you don’t have a basement, or one that can’t be reached quickly, that’s where you would go, away from the windows and outer parts of the building but some windowless hallway deeper inside preferably in a doorframe) if they sense the slightest sign of danger, or what they interpret as danger. Everybody gets paranoid of the sky, and people don’t feel safe in their own homes, their own beds, anymore.
Then there are of course the people who lose their homes because of these strikes, some of them might be unharmed themselves if they weren’t home, but they’ve lost everything.
And that’s only the people who are directly affected. Then you have all the secondary damage (or tertiary, or where are we now..) that comes from destroyed infrastructure. A strike might have been relatively far away from you, but you can’t get to work anymore because your train can’t drive (destroyed railroads), you don’t have warm water to bathe your baby because the water boiler doesn’t work without electricity (destroyed power stations, or lines), or you have no water at all anymore (destroyed water facilities, or pipes), or your grampa has a heart attack but it takes an eternity for the ambulance to arrive (destroyed hospitals or ambulances), or you can’t go to work because nobody can take care of your kids anymore (destroyed kindergartens), and so on.
And on top you have a whole neighborhood, city, a whole country, who, even if they’ve never been near any missile strikes and aren’t affected at all (yet), who live in constant fear that the next missile could have their name on it, or their family’s or friend’s. And the people who are grieving because they’ve lost somebody in a missile strike. And the loss of buildings and cities that have a decades or centuries old history and have become part of the culture of a district or region. The list is endless, but you get the idea.
Russia has launched _thousands_ of missiles on Ukraine since Feb 2022, the vast majority of them targeted at civilians. This air strike terror that Ukraine is going through - and it really is a form of terrorism, it meets all the defining characteristics - has effects far beyond the immediate casualties from the actual missile strikes, that you can’t even imagine.
Even for me it felt 'special’, in a bad way, when a missile hit very close to my building while I was standing on the balcony having a smoke, last year in October in Dnipro. And I had just come back from months of daily bombardments with almost everything, short of missiles, that the Russian military has to offer, so at that point I was pretty much as used to this experience as anybody can possibly get. But there’s a difference between daily life airstrikes in the context of frontline work, where you don’t expect anything else, and getting hit by a missile in a big city far away from the front that suddenly out of the blue, literally out of the blue, disrupts your normal life. At the front you never feel safe by default, but in the middle of Dnipro going to the gas station, or having a smoke, you don’t expect this. Even right now in Ukraine you don’t, because your brain protects you from constantly being afraid as good as it can. Even I was in shock there for a moment before I grabbed my medic bag and gear (rescuers here wear body armor because Russians like to hit the same spot twice exactly to get the rescuers too) to go downstairs and help, and i can only imagine how much worse it must be for people who are completely unprepared for this.
This airstrike terror is a_ huge_ part of this war, that Westerners aren’t really aware of in this form. If you compare the numbers of soldiers dying in Bakhmut alone, let alone the whole frontline, versus civilians who died from missile strikes, or kamikaze drones, it looks like it’s a minor issue, in the bigger picture. But it isn’t, because it’s not just about the dead and injured.
Those of you who have grandparents who experienced some kind of bombardment during WW2 might now, that some of them are still not over it after decades, after decades of living in a safe place in a peaceful country. My grandmother had a friend who made this experience _once_, for _one_ day, as a kid, and as an 80 something year old woman looked like a frightened little girl stuck in the past when she told me about it. That’s how deep the wounds can be that people suffer from being victim of this kind of terror. And Ukraine is experiencing this for over a _year_ now, with no end in sight. I know it’s not the exact same kind of thing, but the effects on people are similar.
I really hope that the generational trauma that this will cause can be turned into something good eventually and will make Ukrainians stronger in the end. But that might be naive, honestly… I hope it’s not.
Maybe be careful how much you post, there's been problems with people trying to professionally publish something they've posted on Internet forums before (Internet/Web fiction).
Last month a guitarist named James Hargreaves posted a YouTube video [1] proposing a fascinating theory about the hidden chord that Cohen refers to in the first verse of Hallelujah (“Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord”).
In the video, Hargreaves makes the case that the hidden chord is the third chord. It would be unplayable on an instrument tuned at the time of King David, and it is the chord that Cohen plays in the chord progression in the first verse under the word ‘composing.’ He then links this up with the ‘third cord’ (no h) from Ecclesiastes which indicates God blessing a marriage by being the third person in the marriage. This then explains the reference “But you don't really care for music, do you?“ and the second verse which talks about King David and his affair with Bathsheba. Hargreaves then goes even further and suggests Cohen might have had an affair like King David and wrote this song to claim it was true love and blessed by God, as the third cord.
Not sure how real this all is. But given that Cohen took years to write the song it would be quite likely there is a deeper meaning.
Cohen has said in interviews he mashes imagery together and picks things that sound right. I'm sure some of the individual references are very true but not sure about any grand narrative explanations where all the lines and verses tie together in some exact neat way like this.
I didn’t want to comment until I’d seen the video — I’ve seen it now and I think it’s really interesting, and brings in a lot of relevant points.
Personally, I would be quite adamant that the reason the word “chord” is chosen there — is for a much simpler reason: it rhymes perfectly with “Lord”. (At first I wrote, a more “prosaic reason” — then realised that while it is a simple reason it is the opposite of “prosaic” - it is literally “poetic”).
But the nature of this video — searching for meaning within a work of art - I think this is a great way to engage with art, and a special kind of joy all its own. Such interpretations are meaningful and can be “true” regardless of whether the author literally meant it the way you take it.
If a physics paper interpreted results of an experiment in this way, or if a jury interpreted evidence in this way, I don’t think it would be good science or justice, as the case may be. But for enjoying and experiencing art in a “meaningful” way, this kind of approach is well worth it.
Yeah, maybe, who knows. Of course, you should be aware that if you search for a pattern long enough, you’ll find one.
Now, in this first verse are interesting lyrics that are referring to the chords being played, which I think are not hidden but you have to know a bit of music theory. English is not my first language so it might be a bit broken, but bear with me :)
"The forth, the fifth" refer to the degrees of the chords being played at this moment. In C major, the 1st degree is the C major chord, the 4th is F major, 5th is G major. This is a very common progression, and usually it ends up in a 5th -> 1st cadence, which would be F major, G major and C major here. But you can also, instead of the expected 1th, go to the 6th, which is a A minor chord here. This is known as a minor fall, I assume, which is exactly the lyrics at that moment. But then, the lyrics mention a "major lift", which is also what happens when it goes through the same progression, 4th, 5th, but then the 3rd (E major) with one note lifted (the G#) making the chord major, and resolving to A in a true cadence, because E major -> A minor is a 5th -> 1st for the A minor scale.
To summarize, the chord progression is faking a IV V I cadence, but falling to VI (A minor), then faking a IV V I cadence again, but lifting to a "majorified" III (E major) which become V I cadence in the A scale, allowing us to resolve on A instead of "falling" on A like the first time.
So we went from the C major scale to the A minor scale, which are also the first two chords of the song, repeated many times.
So, this whole "the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall and the major lift, the baffled king composing hallelujah" is nicely describing the chord progression underneath, while being poetic, and I just love it. So I had to share, sorry if it was obvious to you already. Cheers.
Since turnabout is fair play, it’s worth noting this is mostly false; if you google “minor fall music theory” you’ll only find references to Cohen.
In (conventional western) analysis, a “fall” wouldn't be something mechanical, it would always imply a contextual interpretation.
So it’s a valid reading of the text to say it means something about the chord structure, but — from a purely musical theoretical perspective — just as valid to read it as a reference to the flattening of the minor degree of the scale, or something else entirely.
I assumed wrong :)
The correct term is a deceptive cadence. According to Britannica.com "It begins with V, like an authentic cadence, except that it does not end on the tonic. Often the triad built on the sixth degree (VI, the submediant) substitutes for the tonic, with which it shares two of its three pitches."
Still, I think that by "the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall" Cohen is likely referring to this IV V VI progression with the deceptive "minor fall" cadence, and the major lift is likely referring to the subsequent IV V III(V) VI(I) progression, (degrees in the A scale are in parenthesis) where the III(V) is "majorified" (it should be a E minor in the C major scale) with this "lifted" G# note. This note is also what makes the scale shift from C major to A minor.
Anyway, I could be seeing something that Cohen didn't intend, but as someone who has had a lot of fun composing lots of songs, I'd said that's quite likely he really was collating composing terms describing the underneath progression with grand spiritual feelings, which is what this verse is about: the divine behind music and composing, and maybe more generally creativity and inspiration.
It was definitely not obvious to me! What do you make of the third chord under ‘composing’ that would not be playable in a diatonic (?) scale that was used at the time of King David, as the video claims?
I've not seen the video, but that chord is just a usual major chord, that is, a chord with 3 notes: a fundamental, a major third and a fifth.
It's a very common chord, we could say it's a "natural" chord because when a string vibrates, its first harmonics make this chord. I'm not sure why it would be a secret chord, or why you couldn't get one from a diatonic scale. Now, it's true that, assuming your instrument is "stuck" in the C major scale, you won't have a G# note, which is needed for this E major chord. Whether or not they could play such a chord progression at the time of King David doesn't feel relevant to me, in the context of the rest of the song. I would be surprised if this is what Cohen was getting at by "secret chord". I don't think "secret chord" means a chord in particular in the song. If I had to guess, I would rather think it could be a metaphor of the search for perfection in composition, and this song would be a "tribute" to perfection, but not perfection itself. Just like Tenacious D "tribute" song :)
One of the local music venue owners used to be tour manager for Leonard Cohen. When Cohen died, this guy organised a tribute concert with a whole bunch of local talent.
The guy that did Hallelujah is a fantastic rock guitarist and, recognising that the world was Halellujah'd out, did a rock version, more along the lines of Hendrix' Star Spangled Banner than anything I'd ever heard before. It was _awesome_ (literally awe inspiring).He was so into it he had no recollection later of what he'd done or how he'd performed, but to the audience it had as much power and feeling as the 'real thing'.
Sadly, there's no recording of it in any form. I've asked him a few times if he could do it again so it could be recorded, but he says he doesn't even want to try because it was just of the moment and he didn't think he could do it again
He was quite popular in Europe. “Various Positions” (the album containing Hallelujah) was a top 10 hit in several countries but wasn’t even released in the US.
Cohen was once asked why he was so much more popular in Europe than North America. He said it was probably because they didn’t understand the lyrics.
My introduction to Hallelujah was via Malcolm Gladwell's podcast. A good portion of Season 1, Episode 7 (2016) was dedicated to the evolution of Leonard Cohen's song from 'forgotten B-side track' to the song that is commonly known and covered today.
The author of this submission mentions this podcast:
> On his podcast, Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell presents his theory on two types of artists: conceptual innovators and experimental innovators. Conceptual innovators create their best work early on in their careers.
A caution to those who are going to go grab "Confederacy of Dunces".
It is the equivalent of the "trainwreck reality TV" a la "Jersey Shore" but written significantly before that was a "genre". If you like that kind of humor, you will like the book. If you do not like that kind of humor, you will find the book quite the slog.
The "trainwreck reality TV" aspect is, in my opinion, why the book had such difficulty gaining traction with the literati.
The first time I read it, I disliked it. I read it again twelve years later and I hated it. Ignatius is an unpleasant person and I don’t enjoy reading about his misadventures. This is probably because I’m a philistine.
That is part of the genius of the author though, they were able to create such a reviled character that has stuck with you.
I have read 100's of fiction books and would be hard pressed to recall even 10% of their respective protagonists. I read Dunces once, maybe 15 years ago, and can recall the disgust at that character immediately.
Immediately after the book won the Pulitzer in 1981, Gottlieb could not recall Toole or the manuscript. In his 2016 memoir, Gottlieb wrote that, after returning to A Confederacy of Dunces decades later, he felt the same about its flaws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gottlieb
I find it strange when I hear this song sung and played in church services and other religious events where, I believe, they think it's a religious song of praise or somesuch.
It is a religious song, full of biblical narratives and sung by a Jewish man. That it is more about his life and struggles with love than God doesn’t change that and if anything makes it even more religious.
Me and my girfriend moved to Paris at the beginning of 2020, to a nice little apartment in the Le Marais district. The first Covid lockdown started a couple of months after we came and we were soon all trapped in our tiny spaces, with not much to do, and unable to fully enjoy our very first warm and gentle Paris spring.
Our living room overlooked a closed courtyard and (if you were impolite enough!) you could see in all the neighbors apartments. One guy used to play a record of Buckley's Hallelujah every evening, just as the sun was about to set. Never missed a day, and I found it amusing, at times irritating, but now I remember it very fondly.
Songwriting could be labeled a weird phenomenon like why do people suddenly have/hear melodies and lyrics pop in their head (myself since a teen). Where does it come from as I often wondered.
Though songwriters write differently a lot write as noted above like Dylan, Dolly Parton and countless others (it just comes to them). While others like Cohen work on their songs .. maybe write a poem and then add music to it.. it's not all heard at once in their head. Elton John writes music to Taupin's lyrics. I have tried that before but the lazy boom hear it in my head and sing in Voice memos to remember it later i prefer. Im definetly none of those people mentioned above but songwriting is something i enjoy immensely.
People interested in Hallelujah should read the exhaustive book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" which was also turned into a documentary film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.
There's a key aspect of Cohen’s success that stands out: his resilience to rise after a fall. After being defrauded by his longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, and nearly going bankrupt at 70, Cohen embarked on an extensive world tour from 2008 to 2013 to recover financially.
As a fan of Leonard Cohen’s music, Hallelujah ranks lower on my playlist compared to other songs like those from I’m Your Man, Recent Songs, and New Skin for the Old Ceremony."
I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Cohen on his final U.S. tour. He crooned and gyrated on the stage for 3+ hours and over 30 tracks, including two encores, in his mid-70s at that point. He never lost it, even at the end.
> it. Listen to Leonard Cohen’s version, John Cale’s version, Rufus Wainwright’s version, and Jeff Buckley’s version. Each version is as beautiful as the other, although Buckley’s version transcends them all
This is why music is completely subjective. What some hear as “sublime” others hear as “overcooked”. It’s all fine though, this is all part of what gives life richness and texture.
Quite literally got into an argument with someone about this last night. I said it's his best and worst song, best because it's great, worst because anyone else dare sing it.
I watched a documentary about his life and his battles with the music industry, structured around Hallelujah. I recommend it. I felt like I got to know both the artist and the person.
I don’t have an opinion about whether Cohen or Jeff Buckley version is better, they are equally beautiful. For anyone new to Jeff Buckley check out his live stuff at cafe sin-e. The first time I heard “Be Your Husband” I got goose-bumps. That guy had some amazing talent.
As a Gen Xer, I’ve consigned both Hallelujah and A Confederacy of Dunes to the “maudlin Boomer works” dustbin in my mind. Cale’s version is the best, but I far prefer Paris 1919.
I daresay I'm in a minority of one, but I cannot abide Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. In my opinion one of the most overrated songs in all of popular music.
I hate it, too, find it embarrassingly maudlin, and am willing to extend the overrated label to Leonard Cohen. I like most every successor artist he’s influenced, but just because he was among the first black humored singer-songwriters doesn’t make him the most talented.
> singer-songwriters doesn’t make him the most talented.
He's a poet. And a writer. He never claimed to be a singer, and songwriting always was a side job that earned money. If you want to know how talented Cohen was, read instead of trying to listen.
You're not alone. The lyrics tell a tale of hedonism, but because of the pretty melody and religious imagery, people somehow think it's uplifting? It's blasphemous and cursed according to the ideal that many mistakenly attribute the song to.
I'm not saying people can't enjoy media that uses religious influences in ways contrary to their original purpose. My point is that a line gets crossed when the intent is to create something that's not respectful and people somehow misinterpret it as an endorsement.
Maybe I'm overoptimistic about people's intelligence, but my impression is that no one in the history of ever has thought the song is uplifting. There's a reason why it's been used so often in television and film to accompany heartbreak and tragedy and the like.
(I don't really see "a tale of hedonism" in it, either. I mean, it has sex in it, for sure, but that's not the same thing. It's a song of damaged and broken relationships, not of consequence-free one-night stands.)
[EDITED to add:] That last sentence is an oversimplification. There are lots of versions of the song, even if you consider only Cohen's own ones, with different balances between the religious and the sexual/romantic elements; the original 1984 version isn't "a song of damaged and broken relationships", or at least not only that. You could even, kinda-sorta, call it "uplifting". Later versions, Cohen's and others, not so much.
But none of them, so far as I know, is a "tale of hedonism" in any useful sense.
It is certainly not fun and happy song, but I would go as far as claim it is ultimately uplifting. After all it says "I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah" - past all the suffering and brokenness the author is ultimately thankful for his lot. And in many philosophical traditions, including the Judaic one, the happy man is one who is satisfied with his lot.
Whether a song is uplifting or not is completely subjective. Intelligence has nothing to do with it… Sometimes even a perfect expression of despair in a song can be uplifting to the listener, for many reasons.
Whenever I’ve been at my lowest, for ex, the various versions of Dylan’s "Not Dark Yet" have always been a source of comfort.
I don't see how it tells "a tale of hedonism", especially if you know which parts of the Bible it refers to. There's a lot of sex, lust, love, heroism and betrayal there, but "hedonism" would not be among words I'd ever use for it, neither it seems to be any in describing Cohen's view of love as "cold and broken Hallelujah". You are free to read the text as you wish, of course, but I'd suggest you might be missing some things there.
> My point is that a line gets crossed when the intent is to create something that's not respectful and people somehow misinterpret it as an endorsement.
Not sure what you mean. That Cohen was disrespectful to the biblical sources? The man doesn't use so much of that kind of symbolism in his songs if he doesn't feel a deep connection to it, and Cohen uses a lot of it, consistently. And, I think, he already answers this question in the song itself - what's "the line"? Where does it come from?
Note Jewish myself, but I've seen rabbis complain about people coopting the song as a Christian religious song of praise given its origin, but never complaining about the song itself, either because it "blasphemous" or anything else.
> In my opinion one of the most overrated songs in all of popular music.
What is the other metric you're implying?
Because "popular" is the only metric in your statement and if that's also the metric you imply with "overrated", then the statement doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
I wasn't using the word popular as a metric - "popular music" is a fairly standard term, and is used as a category designator, to refer to music created by modern songwriters and/or bands, as opposed to say, classical music.
I must say I find it slightly hard to believe that this isn't obvious - but I hope this explanation clarifies things.
I think the claim that Buckley's version of Hallelujah is better than Cohen's (even the initial 1984 version) is controversial, at minimum :-)
The observations about obscurity are good ones, however -- A Confederacy of Dunces is a fantastic book, and it's hard to say how many other fantastic works of music, literature, &c. are lost in closets and old laptop hard drives. But I think it's not as much about genius as the author seems to think: given that we don't actually know the denominator under "known great works to unknown great ones," it seems equally plausible to me that "genius" is not the rare or distinguishing thing we always treat it as.
At one point in my music library, I not-quite-dated a woman who's fond of the song ... and I picked up a few versions of it in my music library. There was also a version playing on KFOG at the time.
One of the things that interesting to me about them is that John Cale did a cover of the Cohen song ... and then everyone else covers Cale's version.
I think that Rufus Wainright's version is the closest to Cale's and The Rubes have a version that is more piano.
In a quick scan through iTunes, I haven't found any (yet) that use Cohen's lyrical arrangement rather than Cale's selection.
(edit) Matthew Schuler appears to be a proper Cohen cover (complete with the female backup voices on the Hallelujah choruses over organ). It has the "Lord of Song" verse, but it didn't have the "holy or the broken Hallelujah" verse.
The Canadian Tenors also have a composition that appears to draw from the Cohen rather than the Cale arrangement.
Tori Kelly's cover has all the verses that I recognize from Cohen's version.
This is a major point made by the article. Cohen needed Cale to be his "editor", someone that could beat it into shape. Without Cale's "editing", we probably would not have all the covers today. The article then contrasts this process to what happens an author is unlucky and is faced with an editor who stands in the way of the author's vision rather than becoming a catalyst for it.
https://www.cbc.ca/music/read/how-john-cale-recorded-the-def... has more background on the editor process that Cale did.
> Shortly after Shrek's success, Cale ran into Cohen at a Starbucks in Hollywood, where the two had consequently relocated. "I said, 'Well, I guess we did a good thing there,'" Cale recalls of the meeting. "I asked him, 'How many versions of 'Hallelujah' are there? How many can there be?' He said, 'Well, it's all your fault, you know.' And I said, 'Oh no, everybody's found something great in it because every verse has a different aspect of somebody's character.' I then told him I couldn't sing some of them because they were too religious for me, and he said, 'Yeah, you take what you find useful.'"
I will suggest listening to the Matthew Schuler cover - https://youtu.be/r6KrhD8Ts7c and see how it was inspired by Cohen's version rather than Cale's version (and Schuler's background as a church choir singer is there rather than a singer songwriter background).
What was it about Cale’s version that Jeff Buckley latched on to that he wouldn’t have had he come across Cohen’s version while cat sitting for a friend? Do we know? I don’t think the author explains (if there even is an explanation).
But really great read nonetheless.
Search for “MALCOLM GLADWELL Revisionist History Hallelujah”. He does a whole show on the topic, and covers the major different versions.
My favorite version is 3Blue1Brown's math parody version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOCsdhzo6Jg :)
Seriously though, I'm actually a huge Buckley fan and prefer his version to Leonard Cohen's, though I'm also a big Leonard Cohen fan.
> the claim that Buckley's version of Hallelujah is better than Cohen's (even the initial 1984 version) is controversial, at minimum :-)
It is controversial, but shouldn't be. Not because Buckley's version _is_ better, but because arguing over whose taste in music is better is obnoxious.
Best version I personally ever heard is K.D. LANG's on an Australian tv show. She soars at the end.
https://youtu.be/ikdLBQACC74?si=C2NJaQ1r7vUoKpOJ
Think her versions were Cohen's favorite.
I like Daniel Kahn's version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504
עס איז אַ גוט ליד :-)
[flagged]
Why do people mention Confederacy of Dunces here? I'm not sure how it relates to the song.
The article uses both the song and the book to support a broader observation about the path of art from obscurity into popular culture.
Half of the linked article is about the story behind Confederacy of Dunces.
Buckley's version is trash in my opinion. I've just listened to the official video on YourTube. I had to give up halfway through and switch to Leonard Cohen's version Live in London. Cohen sings it like it matters, like it's a matter of life and death. Moved me to tears.
The gatekeepers have a lot to answer for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q
It’s apples and oranges comparing a studio recording to a live performance.
Anyway, I think this is a similar divide to the performances of ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash. People come to each with their own preconceptions and their own taste, and ultimately both tracks explore different ground and express different things through the same composition.
It is all a matter of taste; for what it’s worth, I think no one has to think something is good, but I have a lot of time for people whose sense of taste lets them explore the ground that the artist tries to take them to and understand the artist on their level, whether they think one particular performance is better or worse than another by some metric.
One of my favorite Cash songs is The Mercy Seat, I just think it’s a masterpiece. And it’s SO Johnny Cash (religion! crime! last line twist!) that I was stunned when I recently looked it up and realized he didn’t write it, it’s a cover of a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds song. The Nick Cave version is… fine? I mean, it’s good! But the Johnny Cash version is sublime, there’s no comparison.
Must have been a weird feeling for an artist to hear Johnny Cash is covering your song. On the one hand, he’s a legend who inspired you and who you worship, but also it has to be a bit of “oh shit, his version is going to be so much better than mine, isn’t it? Well, I guess it’s Johnny’s song now. ”
> Must have been a weird feeling for an artist to hear Johnny Cash is covering your song. On the one hand, he’s a legend who inspired you and who you worship, but also it has to be a bit of “oh shit, his version is going to be so much better than mine, isn’t it? Well, I guess it’s Johnny’s song now. ”
Pff.
Based on monthly listeners on Spotify Johnny Cash is bigger than both Nice Cave and Nine Inch Nails. So what kind of position do you put artists who are both less known and younger in when you cover their songs? Well factoring in respect and professionalism: deference is a likely outcome. “It’s his song now!” Ridiculous.
“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails is fine I guess. “Hurt” by Cash is just an old man voice over a steel string guitar. Very monotone and dull. I heard it way before I heard the NiN version (naturally) and I never understood why people were taken by it.
Another example is “My Body is a Cage” by Arcade Fire. Peter Gabriel did a similarly boring cover: flat vocals (compare with the AF vocals reaching for the higher notes) over a dun-dun-dun piano which builds into a orchestral backing. I guess the instrumentation is comparable but the vocals are just okay. But the vocals are supposedly the wow-factor for such artists.
But AF has done at least one Peter Gabriel cover. So it goes both ways.
To me, cover songs often fall flat because it sounds like the cover artist is just reading someone else's lines as opposed to having a distinct voice.
For me, Cale's version sounds "lived in", if you will. He's taken the words and made them his. There's bitterness, hurt, humour, and real meaning imbued in each line. It's not elegant, it's a bit rough and raw. I think Cale is an underrated vocalist.
Other cover versions like Buckley's sound technically very proficient but slick and emotionally hollow.
>> I think Cale is an underrated vocalist
I totally agree and more so on ballards.
The hairs on my back of my neck always stand up when I hear I Keep A Close Watch (especially the M:FANS version [1], but the original Helen of Troy version is also great [2] and there's plenty of wonderful live versions).
[1] https://youtu.be/d7wBvyrao8I [2] https://youtu.be/LoggPfL3dLU
The thing about Nine Inch Nails version of 'Hurt' is that it works best within the context of the album 'The Downward Spiral'. As a song by itself it's fine, but it doesn't really hit home unless you've been through the entire journey that the album takes you on. It segues right from the album's title track and maintains the noisy crackling from that song, making it feel incredibly fragile. It's a great way to cap off a very personal and self-reflective album, but take it out of that context and it's just, eh, pretty good I guess.
Johnny Cash's version takes the song and puts it into a new context, specifically as a reflection on Cash's own life and career. It hits very differently that way, and I think it's easier for people to relate to. Both versions are excellent in their own way, and I am grateful to Johnny Cash for bringing this song into the public consciousness.
I think even Trent Reznor said it was Johnny Cash’s song now.
He did.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171015203101/http://www.thenin...
Seems like an extreme take. I think Buckley’s version is sublime but love Cohen’s too (which I’ve been privileged to enjoy live on a couple occasions).
I think this is the 'It's either 5-stars or 1-star' principle in action. I feel given a different context they might say that both both renditions are good but one speaks to them on a more personal level.
I'm guessing this comes about as a desire to be heard causing a magnification of the opinion rather than the force of the opinion. If you feel like nobody takes notice of your moderate opinion one might feel like a expressing stronger opinion in the same direction might increase the impact.
I also just don't care for Buckley's cover, and it's not a "not quite as good as the other one" feeling but a "not good" impression, so I can see where GGP is coming from. Buckley needlessly draws out the song.
I own both Cohen's track from Various Positions and Buckley's cover from Grace, which Google gave away for free to try to convince people to use its music store. I don't listen to the latter. Even if I didn't have the former, I still wouldn't listen to the latter. That's just how I feel about it, and I understand that other people feel differently.
I think it's a matter of taste. I just watched your link and it seems performative to me. I imagine a video from one of his earliest performances would have come off as authentic. But decades later, does he really even feel the same way as when he wrote it?
As someone who has performed a number of songs (some of which I wrote) over several decades, and has played one cover song in particular at least several hundred times... every performance is unique.
It is a different experience for the performer than for the audience. As an audience member, I get tired of any particular song very quickly. As a performer, it often feels like a new challenge each time. One night I can struggle to feel anything at all and it's like I'm phoning it in. The next afternoon I can come away from a spontaneous run-through of the same piece and feel like I've found new insights and played it better than ever before.
That being said, while I recognize it's somewhat subjective, I vastly prefer Jeff Buckley's version of this song over all others. Maybe because I fell in love with that whole Grace album at a pivotal point in my life. If I'm going to pick a song I feel like Cohen fully owns, it's gotta be Everybody Knows.
One thing I really like about Buckley's version is that he says "But you don't really care for music, do you?" Not "do ya", which really jars with the rest of the song.
That's what Cohen does in that video as well, and I personally dislike it.
Your opinion is just that. An opinion. (I'll leave it at that)
In matters of taste there is no right an wrong
Only good an bad
I always say: there’s no dumb questions, only questions asked by dumb people.
Seems a little unfair on Yetnikoff and Gottlieb. There are potentially a whole heap of songs and books that are _potentially_ better than both Hallelujah and A Confederacy of Dunces; but they are undiscovered, and most will remain that way. It seems unfair that the author of the piece, with super-duper hindsight and a firm hand on the survivor bias handle, picks two survivors and then ridicules the editor and reviewer who didn't see precisely what everybody else didn't see either. Seems a bit of a cheap shot.
That's not what I understood the author's point to be. Rather, they suggest that genius isn't enough; a large part is luck, timing, having the right mentors and chanpions — and in these two cases, the works became successful in spite of everything. As they point out in the last paragraphs, many works of genius are probably lost because the stars don't align.
You're right in all of that. There's a gross underestimation of the importance of the hand of feckless fortune in the success, or otherwise, of many endeavors - even in the lives of persons who aren't aiming for literary or musical fame, but simply for some marginal gain that advances their lot.
I'm dealing with this right now. My wife was killed by a Russian tank in January while rescuing two wounded soldiers, and she left behind a whole trove of her writings. I've compiled everything into a book, and everyone who takes the time to read it agrees that what she wrote is amazing, moving, heartbreaking - but I cannot for love nor money get the damn thing published.
Here's an example:
=== May 26, 2023 20:33
I worked in Dnipro last year in October and November as first responder for missile strikes (kamikaze drones weren’t a big issue yet in Dnipro at that time, missiles were the main threat), and therefore any news and pictures of an attack there feel very personal to me. They’re not just another headline about another strike to me, but bring back memories from the strikes that I responded to myself and the experiences I made.
Coming from these experiences, let me remind you, or make you aware, that these attacks cause much more harm than what you see on the news pictures or that the numbers show of how many people died or are hospitalized or how many buildings got destroyed.
For example, last year I rescued (‘found cowering on the ground’ would be more fitting in this case actually) a young woman who was close-ish to a half collapsed and burning gas station that was hit by a missile. She had a wound from a piece of shrapnel on her hand, that was all. It wasn’t serious, no bones, nerves, ligaments etc. were damaged, a case for a bandage as first aid and later a few stitches in the hospital. She didn’t even have a serious concussion as far as I could tell on the spot, apparently, luckily, she was still far enough away from the impact for it to cause her any serious physical damage. But she was severely in shock, I mean psychological shock. She looked at me like… I don’t even know how to describe this but I’ll never forget this look in her eyes… like in complete disbelief of what just happened or confusion about what happened, mixed with deep sadness, mixed with fear for her life. Something like this. She was traumatized, and the same applied to everybody who was there when it happened, no matter whether or not they had physical injuries.
Another time we were searching a damaged building right next to a partially destroyed building (from a missile strike). It was basically still intact, 'only’ blown out windows and smaller damage like that from the shockwave and from shrapnel /secondary shrapnel flying around, but no collapsed walls or other visible damage that would affect the building’s structural integrity. “Searching” in this case means we had to check on every single person living there if they need medical help, and/or enter every single apartment, if necessary by force, to see if anybody is there who needs assistance. Everybody in this building was 'fine’, there were no dead, no injured (beyond a few scratches or minor cuts from window glass), no unattended frightened children or elderly, nobody who would’ve needed our help, aside from a bandaid or a piece of candy (for the kids) here and there. These people wouldn’t show up in any statistics that you see on the news, they’re the 'lucky’ ones, but if you talk to them in person there’s no doubt that they’re also direct victims of this missile strike. - If you talk to people later who have experienced something like this, they’ll tell you that their children are deadly afraid of all kinds of banging sounds and of the air raid alert sirens, they run to the hallway (if you don’t have a basement, or one that can’t be reached quickly, that’s where you would go, away from the windows and outer parts of the building but some windowless hallway deeper inside preferably in a doorframe) if they sense the slightest sign of danger, or what they interpret as danger. Everybody gets paranoid of the sky, and people don’t feel safe in their own homes, their own beds, anymore.
Then there are of course the people who lose their homes because of these strikes, some of them might be unharmed themselves if they weren’t home, but they’ve lost everything.
And that’s only the people who are directly affected. Then you have all the secondary damage (or tertiary, or where are we now..) that comes from destroyed infrastructure. A strike might have been relatively far away from you, but you can’t get to work anymore because your train can’t drive (destroyed railroads), you don’t have warm water to bathe your baby because the water boiler doesn’t work without electricity (destroyed power stations, or lines), or you have no water at all anymore (destroyed water facilities, or pipes), or your grampa has a heart attack but it takes an eternity for the ambulance to arrive (destroyed hospitals or ambulances), or you can’t go to work because nobody can take care of your kids anymore (destroyed kindergartens), and so on.
And on top you have a whole neighborhood, city, a whole country, who, even if they’ve never been near any missile strikes and aren’t affected at all (yet), who live in constant fear that the next missile could have their name on it, or their family’s or friend’s. And the people who are grieving because they’ve lost somebody in a missile strike. And the loss of buildings and cities that have a decades or centuries old history and have become part of the culture of a district or region. The list is endless, but you get the idea.
Russia has launched _thousands_ of missiles on Ukraine since Feb 2022, the vast majority of them targeted at civilians. This air strike terror that Ukraine is going through - and it really is a form of terrorism, it meets all the defining characteristics - has effects far beyond the immediate casualties from the actual missile strikes, that you can’t even imagine.
Even for me it felt 'special’, in a bad way, when a missile hit very close to my building while I was standing on the balcony having a smoke, last year in October in Dnipro. And I had just come back from months of daily bombardments with almost everything, short of missiles, that the Russian military has to offer, so at that point I was pretty much as used to this experience as anybody can possibly get. But there’s a difference between daily life airstrikes in the context of frontline work, where you don’t expect anything else, and getting hit by a missile in a big city far away from the front that suddenly out of the blue, literally out of the blue, disrupts your normal life. At the front you never feel safe by default, but in the middle of Dnipro going to the gas station, or having a smoke, you don’t expect this. Even right now in Ukraine you don’t, because your brain protects you from constantly being afraid as good as it can. Even I was in shock there for a moment before I grabbed my medic bag and gear (rescuers here wear body armor because Russians like to hit the same spot twice exactly to get the rescuers too) to go downstairs and help, and i can only imagine how much worse it must be for people who are completely unprepared for this.
This airstrike terror is a_ huge_ part of this war, that Westerners aren’t really aware of in this form. If you compare the numbers of soldiers dying in Bakhmut alone, let alone the whole frontline, versus civilians who died from missile strikes, or kamikaze drones, it looks like it’s a minor issue, in the bigger picture. But it isn’t, because it’s not just about the dead and injured.
Those of you who have grandparents who experienced some kind of bombardment during WW2 might now, that some of them are still not over it after decades, after decades of living in a safe place in a peaceful country. My grandmother had a friend who made this experience _once_, for _one_ day, as a kid, and as an 80 something year old woman looked like a frightened little girl stuck in the past when she told me about it. That’s how deep the wounds can be that people suffer from being victim of this kind of terror. And Ukraine is experiencing this for over a _year_ now, with no end in sight. I know it’s not the exact same kind of thing, but the effects on people are similar.
I really hope that the generational trauma that this will cause can be turned into something good eventually and will make Ukrainians stronger in the end. But that might be naive, honestly… I hope it’s not.
Thank you for sharing this, I wish you best of luck in your journey to get it published.
Maybe be careful how much you post, there's been problems with people trying to professionally publish something they've posted on Internet forums before (Internet/Web fiction).
How much money do you need to get it published?
I’m sure a forum full of top <1% income earners worldwide could figure out how to help
<3 to you, her, her work on the front line, and her writing.
So sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing this.
I agree
It is good that the barriers erected by record co panties and publishers have come down.
But what now? Will we get more than Taylor Swift (bless her)?
The Era of a few "stars" and legions of impoverished artists is hard to shake.
> The Era
I see what you did there :-)
> a few "stars" and legions of impoverished artists is hard to shake.
Arguably "winner takes all" economies are a very common end-point in many disciplines - not just music / the arts.
> Arguably "winner takes all" economies are a very common end-point
Hopefully a waystation not an endpoint
This was really fresh and fantastic when I read it in the 2000s. Wild ride— some of its style definitely reminded me of Confederacy.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/248529.Lord_of_the_Barny...
Last month a guitarist named James Hargreaves posted a YouTube video [1] proposing a fascinating theory about the hidden chord that Cohen refers to in the first verse of Hallelujah (“Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord”).
In the video, Hargreaves makes the case that the hidden chord is the third chord. It would be unplayable on an instrument tuned at the time of King David, and it is the chord that Cohen plays in the chord progression in the first verse under the word ‘composing.’ He then links this up with the ‘third cord’ (no h) from Ecclesiastes which indicates God blessing a marriage by being the third person in the marriage. This then explains the reference “But you don't really care for music, do you?“ and the second verse which talks about King David and his affair with Bathsheba. Hargreaves then goes even further and suggests Cohen might have had an affair like King David and wrote this song to claim it was true love and blessed by God, as the third cord.
Not sure how real this all is. But given that Cohen took years to write the song it would be quite likely there is a deeper meaning.
[1] https://youtu.be/mp9hYxw-Q6I?si=OUB8W5m5dSckBOG2
Cohen has said in interviews he mashes imagery together and picks things that sound right. I'm sure some of the individual references are very true but not sure about any grand narrative explanations where all the lines and verses tie together in some exact neat way like this.
I didn’t want to comment until I’d seen the video — I’ve seen it now and I think it’s really interesting, and brings in a lot of relevant points.
Personally, I would be quite adamant that the reason the word “chord” is chosen there — is for a much simpler reason: it rhymes perfectly with “Lord”. (At first I wrote, a more “prosaic reason” — then realised that while it is a simple reason it is the opposite of “prosaic” - it is literally “poetic”).
But the nature of this video — searching for meaning within a work of art - I think this is a great way to engage with art, and a special kind of joy all its own. Such interpretations are meaningful and can be “true” regardless of whether the author literally meant it the way you take it.
If a physics paper interpreted results of an experiment in this way, or if a jury interpreted evidence in this way, I don’t think it would be good science or justice, as the case may be. But for enjoying and experiencing art in a “meaningful” way, this kind of approach is well worth it.
Yeah, maybe, who knows. Of course, you should be aware that if you search for a pattern long enough, you’ll find one.
Now, in this first verse are interesting lyrics that are referring to the chords being played, which I think are not hidden but you have to know a bit of music theory. English is not my first language so it might be a bit broken, but bear with me :)
"The forth, the fifth" refer to the degrees of the chords being played at this moment. In C major, the 1st degree is the C major chord, the 4th is F major, 5th is G major. This is a very common progression, and usually it ends up in a 5th -> 1st cadence, which would be F major, G major and C major here. But you can also, instead of the expected 1th, go to the 6th, which is a A minor chord here. This is known as a minor fall, I assume, which is exactly the lyrics at that moment. But then, the lyrics mention a "major lift", which is also what happens when it goes through the same progression, 4th, 5th, but then the 3rd (E major) with one note lifted (the G#) making the chord major, and resolving to A in a true cadence, because E major -> A minor is a 5th -> 1st for the A minor scale.
To summarize, the chord progression is faking a IV V I cadence, but falling to VI (A minor), then faking a IV V I cadence again, but lifting to a "majorified" III (E major) which become V I cadence in the A scale, allowing us to resolve on A instead of "falling" on A like the first time. So we went from the C major scale to the A minor scale, which are also the first two chords of the song, repeated many times.
So, this whole "the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall and the major lift, the baffled king composing hallelujah" is nicely describing the chord progression underneath, while being poetic, and I just love it. So I had to share, sorry if it was obvious to you already. Cheers.
> This is known as a minor fall, I assume
Since turnabout is fair play, it’s worth noting this is mostly false; if you google “minor fall music theory” you’ll only find references to Cohen.
In (conventional western) analysis, a “fall” wouldn't be something mechanical, it would always imply a contextual interpretation.
So it’s a valid reading of the text to say it means something about the chord structure, but — from a purely musical theoretical perspective — just as valid to read it as a reference to the flattening of the minor degree of the scale, or something else entirely.
It’s really a lovely song :)
I assumed wrong :) The correct term is a deceptive cadence. According to Britannica.com "It begins with V, like an authentic cadence, except that it does not end on the tonic. Often the triad built on the sixth degree (VI, the submediant) substitutes for the tonic, with which it shares two of its three pitches."
Still, I think that by "the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall" Cohen is likely referring to this IV V VI progression with the deceptive "minor fall" cadence, and the major lift is likely referring to the subsequent IV V III(V) VI(I) progression, (degrees in the A scale are in parenthesis) where the III(V) is "majorified" (it should be a E minor in the C major scale) with this "lifted" G# note. This note is also what makes the scale shift from C major to A minor.
Anyway, I could be seeing something that Cohen didn't intend, but as someone who has had a lot of fun composing lots of songs, I'd said that's quite likely he really was collating composing terms describing the underneath progression with grand spiritual feelings, which is what this verse is about: the divine behind music and composing, and maybe more generally creativity and inspiration.
A lovely song indeed :)
> sorry if it was obvious to you already
It was definitely not obvious to me! What do you make of the third chord under ‘composing’ that would not be playable in a diatonic (?) scale that was used at the time of King David, as the video claims?
I've not seen the video, but that chord is just a usual major chord, that is, a chord with 3 notes: a fundamental, a major third and a fifth.
It's a very common chord, we could say it's a "natural" chord because when a string vibrates, its first harmonics make this chord. I'm not sure why it would be a secret chord, or why you couldn't get one from a diatonic scale. Now, it's true that, assuming your instrument is "stuck" in the C major scale, you won't have a G# note, which is needed for this E major chord. Whether or not they could play such a chord progression at the time of King David doesn't feel relevant to me, in the context of the rest of the song. I would be surprised if this is what Cohen was getting at by "secret chord". I don't think "secret chord" means a chord in particular in the song. If I had to guess, I would rather think it could be a metaphor of the search for perfection in composition, and this song would be a "tribute" to perfection, but not perfection itself. Just like Tenacious D "tribute" song :)
i just finished watching it when I saw your comment, came here to post about it, you're right, it's a fascinating video
One of the local music venue owners used to be tour manager for Leonard Cohen. When Cohen died, this guy organised a tribute concert with a whole bunch of local talent.
The guy that did Hallelujah is a fantastic rock guitarist and, recognising that the world was Halellujah'd out, did a rock version, more along the lines of Hendrix' Star Spangled Banner than anything I'd ever heard before. It was _awesome_ (literally awe inspiring).He was so into it he had no recollection later of what he'd done or how he'd performed, but to the audience it had as much power and feeling as the 'real thing'.
Sadly, there's no recording of it in any form. I've asked him a few times if he could do it again so it could be recorded, but he says he doesn't even want to try because it was just of the moment and he didn't think he could do it again
Odd to hear Leonard described as a late bloomer
True he did not make records until his thirties, but Songs From a Room was a huge influence on me, in the 1970s
Leonard was a huge star in many parts of the world then
He was quite popular in Europe. “Various Positions” (the album containing Hallelujah) was a top 10 hit in several countries but wasn’t even released in the US.
Cohen was once asked why he was so much more popular in Europe than North America. He said it was probably because they didn’t understand the lyrics.
My introduction to Hallelujah was via Malcolm Gladwell's podcast. A good portion of Season 1, Episode 7 (2016) was dedicated to the evolution of Leonard Cohen's song from 'forgotten B-side track' to the song that is commonly known and covered today.
https://youtu.be/4OKQTl09vCk?t=1180 (link to 19:30) https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/halleluj...
The author of this submission mentions this podcast:
> On his podcast, Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell presents his theory on two types of artists: conceptual innovators and experimental innovators. Conceptual innovators create their best work early on in their careers.
Both this submission and Gladwell's podcast are based on Alan Light's 2014 book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Holy-or-the-Broke... / https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Broken_Hallelujah_Roc...
A caution to those who are going to go grab "Confederacy of Dunces".
It is the equivalent of the "trainwreck reality TV" a la "Jersey Shore" but written significantly before that was a "genre". If you like that kind of humor, you will like the book. If you do not like that kind of humor, you will find the book quite the slog.
The "trainwreck reality TV" aspect is, in my opinion, why the book had such difficulty gaining traction with the literati.
The first time I read it, I disliked it. I read it again twelve years later and I hated it. Ignatius is an unpleasant person and I don’t enjoy reading about his misadventures. This is probably because I’m a philistine.
That is part of the genius of the author though, they were able to create such a reviled character that has stuck with you.
I have read 100's of fiction books and would be hard pressed to recall even 10% of their respective protagonists. I read Dunces once, maybe 15 years ago, and can recall the disgust at that character immediately.
Immediately after the book won the Pulitzer in 1981, Gottlieb could not recall Toole or the manuscript. In his 2016 memoir, Gottlieb wrote that, after returning to A Confederacy of Dunces decades later, he felt the same about its flaws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gottlieb
I find it strange when I hear this song sung and played in church services and other religious events where, I believe, they think it's a religious song of praise or somesuch.
It is a religious song, full of biblical narratives and sung by a Jewish man. That it is more about his life and struggles with love than God doesn’t change that and if anything makes it even more religious.
Me and my girfriend moved to Paris at the beginning of 2020, to a nice little apartment in the Le Marais district. The first Covid lockdown started a couple of months after we came and we were soon all trapped in our tiny spaces, with not much to do, and unable to fully enjoy our very first warm and gentle Paris spring.
Our living room overlooked a closed courtyard and (if you were impolite enough!) you could see in all the neighbors apartments. One guy used to play a record of Buckley's Hallelujah every evening, just as the sun was about to set. Never missed a day, and I found it amusing, at times irritating, but now I remember it very fondly.
Songwriting could be labeled a weird phenomenon like why do people suddenly have/hear melodies and lyrics pop in their head (myself since a teen). Where does it come from as I often wondered.
Though songwriters write differently a lot write as noted above like Dylan, Dolly Parton and countless others (it just comes to them). While others like Cohen work on their songs .. maybe write a poem and then add music to it.. it's not all heard at once in their head. Elton John writes music to Taupin's lyrics. I have tried that before but the lazy boom hear it in my head and sing in Voice memos to remember it later i prefer. Im definetly none of those people mentioned above but songwriting is something i enjoy immensely.
People interested in Hallelujah should read the exhaustive book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" which was also turned into a documentary film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.
There's a key aspect of Cohen’s success that stands out: his resilience to rise after a fall. After being defrauded by his longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, and nearly going bankrupt at 70, Cohen embarked on an extensive world tour from 2008 to 2013 to recover financially.
As a fan of Leonard Cohen’s music, Hallelujah ranks lower on my playlist compared to other songs like those from I’m Your Man, Recent Songs, and New Skin for the Old Ceremony."
I think the Future is a massively under appreciated album.
I don't remember when I first heard Hallelujah. But I do remember that I was mesmerised from the first verse.
I definitely first heard John Cale’s version in Shrek.
Until today I thought it was Rufus Wainright’s version.
But for some reason the version in the film itself is Cale’s, and the version in the official soundtrack is Wainright’s!
You may appreciate this (not my post, just amusing to me): https://world.hey.com/horses/a-rant-about-the-gaslighting-ba...
I did. I really appreciated that. It definitely mirrors, in hyperbole, my own sense of shock and irritation!
It certainly says a lot that the Wainright version has 167,633,627 plays on Spotify, and Cale's has 3,823,629.
I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Cohen on his final U.S. tour. He crooned and gyrated on the stage for 3+ hours and over 30 tracks, including two encores, in his mid-70s at that point. He never lost it, even at the end.
> it. Listen to Leonard Cohen’s version, John Cale’s version, Rufus Wainwright’s version, and Jeff Buckley’s version. Each version is as beautiful as the other, although Buckley’s version transcends them all
No. Cohen’s is better.
I wonder if it depends which version you heard first. I’m a Cohen fan but find his version dull, where the Buckley version is sublime
This is why music is completely subjective. What some hear as “sublime” others hear as “overcooked”. It’s all fine though, this is all part of what gives life richness and texture.
Quite literally got into an argument with someone about this last night. I said it's his best and worst song, best because it's great, worst because anyone else dare sing it.
I watched a documentary about his life and his battles with the music industry, structured around Hallelujah. I recommend it. I felt like I got to know both the artist and the person.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7600742/
This song is perfection. It transcended the medium and became something else entirely. Well and truly, a masterpiece.
I don’t have an opinion about whether Cohen or Jeff Buckley version is better, they are equally beautiful. For anyone new to Jeff Buckley check out his live stuff at cafe sin-e. The first time I heard “Be Your Husband” I got goose-bumps. That guy had some amazing talent.
This article reminds me of “the last days of roger federer”
As a Gen Xer, I’ve consigned both Hallelujah and A Confederacy of Dunes to the “maudlin Boomer works” dustbin in my mind. Cale’s version is the best, but I far prefer Paris 1919.
I daresay I'm in a minority of one, but I cannot abide Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. In my opinion one of the most overrated songs in all of popular music.
I hate it, too, find it embarrassingly maudlin, and am willing to extend the overrated label to Leonard Cohen. I like most every successor artist he’s influenced, but just because he was among the first black humored singer-songwriters doesn’t make him the most talented.
> singer-songwriters doesn’t make him the most talented.
He's a poet. And a writer. He never claimed to be a singer, and songwriting always was a side job that earned money. If you want to know how talented Cohen was, read instead of trying to listen.
He was born like that. He had no choice. He was born with the gift of a golden voice.
(Reference to his Tower of Song — and I can hear the wink as he calls his voice golden.)
You're not alone. The lyrics tell a tale of hedonism, but because of the pretty melody and religious imagery, people somehow think it's uplifting? It's blasphemous and cursed according to the ideal that many mistakenly attribute the song to.
I'm not saying people can't enjoy media that uses religious influences in ways contrary to their original purpose. My point is that a line gets crossed when the intent is to create something that's not respectful and people somehow misinterpret it as an endorsement.
Maybe I'm overoptimistic about people's intelligence, but my impression is that no one in the history of ever has thought the song is uplifting. There's a reason why it's been used so often in television and film to accompany heartbreak and tragedy and the like.
(I don't really see "a tale of hedonism" in it, either. I mean, it has sex in it, for sure, but that's not the same thing. It's a song of damaged and broken relationships, not of consequence-free one-night stands.)
[EDITED to add:] That last sentence is an oversimplification. There are lots of versions of the song, even if you consider only Cohen's own ones, with different balances between the religious and the sexual/romantic elements; the original 1984 version isn't "a song of damaged and broken relationships", or at least not only that. You could even, kinda-sorta, call it "uplifting". Later versions, Cohen's and others, not so much.
But none of them, so far as I know, is a "tale of hedonism" in any useful sense.
It is certainly not fun and happy song, but I would go as far as claim it is ultimately uplifting. After all it says "I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah" - past all the suffering and brokenness the author is ultimately thankful for his lot. And in many philosophical traditions, including the Judaic one, the happy man is one who is satisfied with his lot.
Whether a song is uplifting or not is completely subjective. Intelligence has nothing to do with it… Sometimes even a perfect expression of despair in a song can be uplifting to the listener, for many reasons.
Whenever I’ve been at my lowest, for ex, the various versions of Dylan’s "Not Dark Yet" have always been a source of comfort.
I don't see how it tells "a tale of hedonism", especially if you know which parts of the Bible it refers to. There's a lot of sex, lust, love, heroism and betrayal there, but "hedonism" would not be among words I'd ever use for it, neither it seems to be any in describing Cohen's view of love as "cold and broken Hallelujah". You are free to read the text as you wish, of course, but I'd suggest you might be missing some things there.
> My point is that a line gets crossed when the intent is to create something that's not respectful and people somehow misinterpret it as an endorsement.
Not sure what you mean. That Cohen was disrespectful to the biblical sources? The man doesn't use so much of that kind of symbolism in his songs if he doesn't feel a deep connection to it, and Cohen uses a lot of it, consistently. And, I think, he already answers this question in the song itself - what's "the line"? Where does it come from?
What in the song is blasphemous?
(I suppose the name of the song itself is literally blasphemous, but I don't think this is what you meant?)
Note Jewish myself, but I've seen rabbis complain about people coopting the song as a Christian religious song of praise given its origin, but never complaining about the song itself, either because it "blasphemous" or anything else.
What is your basis for calling it blasphemous?
> In my opinion one of the most overrated songs in all of popular music.
What is the other metric you're implying?
Because "popular" is the only metric in your statement and if that's also the metric you imply with "overrated", then the statement doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
I wasn't using the word popular as a metric - "popular music" is a fairly standard term, and is used as a category designator, to refer to music created by modern songwriters and/or bands, as opposed to say, classical music.
I must say I find it slightly hard to believe that this isn't obvious - but I hope this explanation clarifies things.
You may think it's pedantic, but in this case it's a significant distinction.
"popular music" != "pop music"
The term "popular music" is an umbrella for music that has "wide appeal" and associated with "large audiences" [0] -- i.e. it's a statistical term.
It can apply to many "genres" (that's the music industry term, rather than categories).
One of those genres[1] is "pop music"[2]. And after your clarification, I now assume your OP actually meant "pop music".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_genre [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music
generally that song is rated on lyrical quality, so that's what I would expect.
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(1) That is entirely made up; (2) you can't do this here.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41476318.
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