I heard there was a Cohen song
It's lyrics known, its covers strong
But you don't really listen to it, do ya?
The song is just completely lewd
It's all about the fucking, dude
So please don't misinterpret "Hallelujah"
Thank you for sharing this article. Read it yesterday. Reread it today. Thinking about it in context with the Palestinians burned to death in a hospital tent yesterday. "The creation is a catastrophe." That line buried itself into me.
I mean, Coil covering “Who By Fire” on Horse Rotorvator, an album whose entire thematic arc is in the interplay of gay sex and the inevitability of death, has an extremely similar aura. Not quite as funny, but the whip crack percussion makes it kinkier.
Reading the comments and here to back you up on that. most of the biblical references are also about fucking. Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba. The rest of the song is "I told you it was a one night stand when we hooked up so don't say I didn't warn ya."
[in a dirgelike minor key]
this one goes out to the one i love
this one goes out to the one i left behind
a simple prop to occupy my time
this one goes out to the one i love
[screams] FIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRE
I discovered this in shock when I was singing it as a lullaby to my one year child when my female friend who is zero relation to my family was over visiting with the two of us.
Yeah, saying "It's about fucking" as though that negates any other meaning is missing the point. Cohen didn't write a song about fucking. He wrote a song about fucking using religious imagery, much of it taken from sacred texts containing erotic poetry.
Trying to divorce the song from the spiritual aspects is giving in to the sort of ascetism that sees the physical world as inherently profane and antithetical to numinous, which is the exact opposite of Cohen's point.
Well it's"become" a peace anthem. From "she tied you to a kitchen chair," "And remember when I moved in you, the holy dark was moving too" to peace and love everyone. Also "all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you."
I sat through an incredibly awkward teen retreat at which young progressive Sister Elizabeth (the only person in the room who’d never seen the video) tried to convince us that we should embrace Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” as a message from God.
In my opinion, in addition to being about fucking, it's also a meditation on the holiness of the profane, and an explicit exploration of how Judaism sees both sex and language differently than Christianity. I hate how all that gets erased when the song is used as a Christian-coded anthem.
I got into "no really, Running Up That Hill is a deeply weird song about body swapping sex!, read or watch Kate Bush's interviews about it!" discourse last year and people would not believe me.
They don’t tour, but the do play select Texas venues, and it’s a hilarious act. (Their online work is one guy, but the live act is eight artists, mostly with a musical improv background)
look, maybe I just have a dirty mind, but I don't see how anyone could interpret the line "remember when I moved in you" as being about anything but sex??!!
Facebook has caused a lot of evil, but being able to see my cousin and her kids sing Hallelujah at Christmas in their small town Iowa church on Christmas almost makes up for it.
I remember seeing a lot of little kids bopping away to "Bobby Brown Goes Down" at a party in a remote Saxony village and being very grateful that none of them understood the lyrics.
I have a very vivid memory of jumping on the bed with my bunk mates at camp singing “sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it but everybody should” when I was about 8yo 😂
Maybe I'm just a little dim but the whole poem is just a lot of words to me. I'm told I have to read up about David and Bathsheba and each Hallelujah meaning something different each time but tbh I can't be arsed.
Not a charity, more of an ad, but a real banging version. Also I think this means that they have a full recording of Bowie singing it somewhere https://youtu.be/WJpQJWpVJds?si=_-WphdwRM7JF3Oho
That song was played as part of the clergy selected music program at a Diocesan Synod (Anglican, progressive, complete with extremely English bishop) and it was awesome.
Religion is by and large regressive, but we had some fun with it.
It kills me that Pentatonix didn't even seem to notice the line about getting tied to a kitchen chair when they shoehorned it into their Christmas album
I’m incredibly oblivious and just now learning this, i apologize in advance, but like, what does that mean when it’s used in shrek? Are they just using it to imply sex? bc it’s used very sombrely, and that confuses me, unless they’re just misusing it like everyone does
One time like 20 years ago Rufus came to the famous kitschy all-night restaurant I used to work at in the East Village at like 2 AM and was a total asshole. It sucked because I loved him.
The next day, though he cam back and apologized.
So anyway, he should do that but to everyone for this tweet.
What version has the missing verses? I'm not the biggest Cohen fan (mainly So Long, MA/Who By Fire?/Famous Blue/First We Take Manhattan) and every one I've heard isn't about sex in anyway I can discern (outside of perhaps the 2nd verse and even that is playing with Biblical imagery).
Buckley’s interpretation is the only one I know of that has an intentionally sexual meaning, and he admitted this when he said he was scared to let Cohen hear it because of that. Cohen was blown away by his version. I don’t think any other version has that intent.
The thing about the "missing verses" is that the original version Cohen wrote had 4 verses. He then wrote 4 additional verses that he swapped in in later performances/tours. He never to my knowledge performed all the "canon" verses together at the same time.
There's a response in this forum discussion with all eight verses Cohen performed at various points. Interestingly, the one verse that is blatantly referencing sex ("Remember when I moved in you") was a later addition, not in the original. https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=8046
IMO, the people who flatten this song down to "it's about fucking" are as off-base as the people who flatten it down to "it's about religion." The consistent theme across all the verses is finding holiness and revelation in a relationship that FAILED. The fucking is all very pointedly past tense!
I was mainly speaking from the perspective of someone who heard a cover, went back, found the original on Apple Music, listened to that, Googled the lyrics, but didn't go on to collect Cohen live tapes or go to the subreddit.
John Cale said that when he recorded his version, Cohen sent him pages and pages different verses, of which he picked his favorites. But so far as I know, the full song has never been published. Most artists perform a mix-and-match of the Cohen and Cale versions.
There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me do ya?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Maybe there's a God above
But all I ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not someone who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
aren’t these in the version that most people hear (at least by cohen). are these people that bad at recognising subtext. i mean the second one is barely subtext
The whole song is a series of protracted metaphors that describe erotic love using the imagery of religious devotion. It's not about any one verse, it's about all/any of them taken as a group.
It is incorrect to think of it in 'all the verses' terms. There's a good rundown on a Cohen forum somewhere, but there is the 84 studio version, a different set of verses later used in tours, and one extra verse in the Stranger Music lyrics anthology. Covers do a mix and match for better or worse.
"There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do ya?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah"
This verse is not included in the Various Positions song but is in later live recordings
All the religious imagery can be viewed as sexual imagery as well. Though I agree with the poster below who says that the song is about a failed relationship using religious imagery, rather than sex.
one of the craziest parts about him saying that is that he has also said publicly that he never would have recorded his own cover of that song if he had known about jeff buckley’s version first
i think your point is valid and a degree of skepticism is warranted here
that said, he has still insisted publicly as recently as last year (i was there when he said it) he had no prior knowledge of it at the time he recorded his own version
Comments
It's lyrics known, its covers strong
But you don't really listen to it, do ya?
The song is just completely lewd
It's all about the fucking, dude
So please don't misinterpret "Hallelujah"
I figured that out the first time I heard it, in my early twenties. It was so obvious I made faces about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504
https://forward.com/culture/music/469890/leonard-cohen-hallelujah-shrek-jewish-jeff-buckley-alan-light-kabbalah/
this one goes out to the one i love
this one goes out to the one i left behind
a simple prop to occupy my time
this one goes out to the one i love
[screams] FIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRE
[dumb people]
first dance at our wedding! 💕
Jesus wept.
And the holy dove she was moving too
And every single breath we drew was Hallelujah🎶
Nice
He wrote more than 100 verses, and there are three distinct variations.
https://youtu.be/11IPQYZMXjc?si=-9ewLm9EUC6wemxl
I don't think there's anything strange about it being about fucking and also about the immanence of the divine at the same time.
https://youtu.be/EC7V-ayjorg
And I could have the hate that it brings
Which movie?
Like pretty much every other Leonard Cohen song, it’s about fucking AND God.
Religion is by and large regressive, but we had some fun with it.
The next day, though he cam back and apologized.
So anyway, he should do that but to everyone for this tweet.
https://xkcd.com/2501/
I was mainly speaking from the perspective of someone who heard a cover, went back, found the original on Apple Music, listened to that, Googled the lyrics, but didn't go on to collect Cohen live tapes or go to the subreddit.
But people are so certain about it that I must be missing something obvious.
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah’
Is widely interpreted to mean she tied him to the chair to fuck (so hard it broke), and he came…
It's not a Born in the USA type situation where the verses are completely, "THIS SONG ISN'T ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS!"
It feels more open ended to me.
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me do ya?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
One example, I'll go look for more.
But all I ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not someone who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
I'm not saying you don't, but I am saying that that's you reading into it and it's not the only way you can read them.
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do ya?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah"
This verse is not included in the Various Positions song but is in later live recordings
that said, he has still insisted publicly as recently as last year (i was there when he said it) he had no prior knowledge of it at the time he recorded his own version