“Hallelujah” is a biblical exclamation and a transliteration of a Hebrew word, which is composed of two elements: hillel means to praise joyously and Jah is the name of God. But even when this word is used as an expression of joy or relief and a synonym for “Praise the Lord”, in 1984, it was taken by the Canadian Leonard Cohen in his album Various Positions to write the most performed song in history: “Hallelujah”. Each stanza ends with the word that gives the song its title, which is then repeated four times, giving the song its signature prayer-like incantation. It took a few years for "Hallelujah" to emerge as a classic. The song laid dormant in Cohen's vast repertoire for more than a decade before its popularity surged up again with a cover of the song played by Jeff Buckley (1992). After that, it has been performed by more than 300 singers, it has been the subject of a BBC Radio documentary, and been in the soundtracks of numerous films and television programs. Different interpretations of the song may include different verses, out of the over 80 verses that Cohen originally wrote. Nevertheless, if you hear the word “Hallelujah” in a song, you would think about it as a song for God, but Leonard used this word and different stories of the Bible to write a song with a different meaning to that one. Continue reading and discover why
In the book called “The holy and the broken” published in 2012, it is mentioned what Leonard Cohen said in an interview (2009) about his song:
I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world. The Hallelujah, the David's Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.
The words of Cohen clearly reflect that he wanted to show another meaning for “hallelujah” and he mixed the word with verses that show stories of power, love, and hope to reach this goal. This can be seen in stanzas which contain verses such as “She tied you to her kitchen chair” and “All I've ever learned from love, was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.” The author also included in a same stanza, hopeful and hopeless verses at the same time, like these ones: “I used to live alone before I knew you” versus “Love is not a victory march”. And even when those verses are not exactly prayers or praises, after each one, there is a “Hallelujah”.
Throughout the song, we can see different stories from the Bible, but why would he do it if he did not want to write a religious song? In the first and second stanzas, he talks about David: “Well I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord, the baffled king composing Hallelujah.” So in this case, the author wanted to show a “Happy Hallelujah” of David, who was happy for his first step toward his rise to power and uniting the Jewish people, as it is shown in the Bible:
And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him – 1 Samuel 16:23.
The story continues in the second stanza, since the next lines Leonard invokes another incident in the story of David, when the king discovers and is tempted by Bathsheba:
Your faith was strong but you needed proof, you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you, she broke your throne and she cut your hair and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.
So in that verse, the Hallelujah of David is a “Hallelujah of thanks.” Even after the drama, the sinful King David is still Israel's greatest poet, warrior and hope. But is Leonard telling a simple story? No, he is not. He could be talking about the abuse of power in the name of lust, a common situation in the real life. With each line of the song, the author describes real situations, situations of a disastrous world, but he shows in each one that we can reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and say “hallelujah”.
"He's rescued the word hallelujah from being just a religious word," said the Right Reverend Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, in the BBC radio documentary. We can note it in the verse where, the word that is used as an expression of joy or relief in the Bible, is mentioned in the end of the third stanza as “It is a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.” How many times can we say a “sad Hallelujah” in our lives? Maybe, many times a hallelujah can be said to exclaim pain and anguish. However, Leonard shows in the next stanza a hopeful sentence: “Every breath we drew was Hallelujah” and this is how he tells us through the song “Every cloud has a silver lining.” So Cohen knew how to make a contrast between “bad moments” and “happy moments” throughout the song, using in both cases “Hallelujah” to conclude each stanza and show the use of this word to exclaim different feelings.
This song has been the most performed song of all the times, has been sung by many people in different shows, competitions, auditions, and different languages, regardless of whether they are Christian or not. Leonard Cohen wanted to puss “Hallelujah” to our ordinary world and rescue it from being a simple religious word. Although he invoked short stories from Bible, it was not just to show a religious message. He used those stories to depict scenes from our everyday life and show a real world: a world with bad and good moments and with good and bad people. The song has been used in different scenes of movies and so different contexts that it was even used in Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” (2009), bringing the eroticism to the surface, using “Hallelujah” to soundtrack a sex scene featuring the characters Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II.
So now I ask you: what do you hear with this song, THE HOLY OR THE BROKEN Hallelujah?. let me know it in the comments bellow