I spoze it's some measure of Cohen's greatness that 49% of people think "Halleluiah" is a song of worship, and 49% of people think it's a celebration of love.
11
Replies
0
Boosts
@GeePawHill
Depends if you listen to the words, and also which version.
"There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah"
I didn't appreciate it until I heard this seven-verse version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x9EY0s9w08
@GeePawHill
I wonder what percentage assume “song of worship” and “celebration of love” are mutually exclusive categories.
(I’m not saying Cohen’s Hallelujah is necessarily either exactly, but just as an aside.)
@GeePawHill Despair. I always thought it was forced joyety in the face of despair.
Just thought I'd add context for those, like me, whose musical tastes run more to the warrior pursuits and might not know this.
@adritheonly Cohen's take is great, but my personal favorite is the Jeff Buckley take.
@GeePawHill Certainly a better rendition, agreed. Thing is, I find Cohen really depressing and only learned to appreciate that song in a movie (can't remember which) where it was used to great effect.
@GeePawHill I guess I'm the 2%. Like most of his work, a stark rumination on a word he found fascinating, apart from the textbook meaning, the power it holds and the power we give to language from trauma and grief.
(Or he could have just wrote it while eating a delicious taco. Fuck if I know.)
@Tock @GeePawHill It's clearly about attending an all-you-can-eat taco evening: "It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth."
Then
"The minor fall (of some ingredient out of the taco) and the major lift (eating it anyway despite being stuffed)."
@cford @GeePawHill "And love is not a victory march, it's cold and it's a empty bottle of Cholula... I mean Hallelujah..."
I love it.
I think "the poet-laureate of despair" would appreciate the irony.
@GeePawHill Incidentally, yesterday we went to a fringe theatre to watch a play about Leonard Cohen. I summed my experience of the play with one word - pathos.
