But on stage at Glastonbury this year, as sunset purpled the sky, he wrenched every atom of emotion from a song which only he fully understood, and seemed to deliver a timely reminder: This is my song. One version that is rarely praised is Cohen's own, hamstrung by its chintzy 80s production.
Jeff buckley hallelujah lyrics interpretation full#
It can be stoic or histrionic, reassuring or devastating, warm and full or "cold and broken", a song that bends but never breaks.
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Purists may sometimes yowl but it is malleable enough to weather any treatment. Jon Bon Jovi flattens it into a MOR dirge. Kathryn Williams grants it a crystalline fragility, cracking it open with sudden force on the final chorus. Bono reconfigures it as spoken-word trip hop novel but hopelessly pretentious. Katherine Jenkins flutters prissily around it. But here’s the thing: Jeff Buckley’s arrangement of ‘Hallelujah’ isn’t Jeff Buckley’s at all it’s John Cale’s. Rufus Wainwright approaches it like a supplicant, with awestruck respect. Among devoted Buckley fans, that delicate reworking of ‘Hallelujah’ is tantamount to genius proof of the singer’s ability to take even the most under-appreciated work and make it a massive hit. Bob Dylan handles it roughly, fraying the edges and relishing the acrid humour. Here is a simple melody with potential for myriad embellishments, and a pool of lyrics that cryptically encompass love, sex, violence, religion and songwriting itself without ever insisting on one interpretation. Since then, its allure for singers has been irresistible.
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And it was Buckley, believing it was about "the hallelujah of the orgasm", who escalated the drama and turned the climax into a hair-raising vocal tour de force. It was Cale's 1991 arrangement, which removed Cohen's last two redemptive verses and restored the more cynical one about "how to shoot at someone who outdrew you", that gave this previously little-heard song new life. When John Cale asked Cohen to send him the lyrics, 15 verses scrolled through the fax machine. I never get tired of it."Ĭohen took five years to write it, filling several notebooks with around 80 potential verses even his own live version is drastically different from his 1984 studio recording. kd lang, just one of many who have covered it, attested, "It just has so much fodder, so much density. One reason Hallelujah endures and proliferates is that you get a lot of song for your money.