Hallelujah Again and Again

[Neophyte]

It would be very selfish of me to want an end to Hallelujah being covered by other artists. If I hadn't heard Gord Downie sing it in the movie Saint Ralph, I don't know when I would have discovered Leonard and the world of pleasure he's brought me. I guess another cover version would have eventually brought me to him, but I surely wasn't about to come across an original version! Leonard's is my favorite, but I'm a big fan of many of the covers, including those of Tim Urban and Lee DeWyze on American Idol. The song is too gorgeous not to be shared!! I wish everyone the opportunity to hear it .....and to follow up and discover its author and all of his other masterpieces! Sony may have reaped the Saint Ralph money, but I've been doing my best to fill the Leonard Cohen coffers since finding him!

[lizzytysh]

Hi Wendy ~

That's wonderful to hear. Renee, of course, has the capability of taking it out into the ethers. Her sensitive and warm [which I heard in the snippet] and understated version sounds SO appealing. I really want that cd.

Hi Neophyte ~

You make such great points. YES... on filling Leonard's coffers. When I saw DeWyze's singing of it, I thought it was pretty decent for his generation and how the music is now. Many his age will relate very well to it. You saw that in the audience, with so many arms raised high in response. Along with everything else, it feels like a song of worship and [depending on one's orientation to this kind of thing] your arms just instinctively want to rise into the air toward G~d. And, if it weren't for covers, look how MANY people would not be here or in the concert halls or just at home, reading about and listening to Leonard, today... and sharing him with others. I only wish Leonard felt better about so many people feeling compelled to sing it.


~ Lizzy

[phreil]

Well this was sent to me by Google Alerts, and boy it gave me a surprise. But I absolutely love it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8opo-x8P9kc

[caz]

Thanks for passing on the link. I love it too! And yes, it was a pleasant surprise - good old Google alerts!

[dick]

Must admit --- I llke it more than a little!

Thanks for the link

[lizzytysh]

Beautifully constructed and performed. Yes, thank you for this link, phreil.

Every time I see something like this, I can't begin to express how much it means to me. I am SO SO SO grateful to the universe and G~d that Leonard is being allowed to see and hear the many fruits of his labours... including the range of people's ages and differences in genres.

Leonard Cohen in perpetuity. Leonard Cohen forever.


~ Lizzy

[ladydi]

What an amazing rendition of Hallelujah by all three artists! One of the best I've heard. Very moving and especially liked how the sketch-in-progress of Leonard was always evident....a great homage to the master. I think I'll go back and watch it again now Thanks for sharing the link with us.

edit: I like that Lizzy! "Leonard Cohen in perpetuity. Leonard Cohen forever."

[gilly-rjd]

Wow! an effortless performance - incredibly beautiful.

[lizzytysh]

Again and Again... twice more in a row I've just watched this video... and four more intermittently. There's something about it that's very satisfying. I love the visuals with the comfortable room in the background; the vibrancy of full colour with the guitarist; the variations between colour, black&white, sepia, and other nostalgia tones with the room and the singers; the cameo presentations; and the continual sketching of the wonderful picture of Leonard's face and hat; their vocal harmony; and the inspiring guitar playing by the unassuming mystery boy in the hoodie. And the kindness in the regular-guy man's face and the sincerity in his voice. He has a resemblance to John Goodman.

Perhaps, too, the number of people and approaches involved... the strip of film and the writing of some integral lyrics from the song across the top ~ and their video making it ever so clear from the beginning, throughout, and to the very end that Leonard is the one who wrote this beautiful song... and the depth of their admiration and gratitude for him. Courtney's voice and face are very sweet and pure and her voice has that youthful purity and crack in it that is genuine and charming. I also love the warmth and flirtation in her eyes and smile. The heartfelt immediacy of this video is compelling.

Yes... vocally effortless... and the video still with a complex presentation worthy of Leonard. I just love this, so well done, lovely video, very very much. It's so graceful and just keeps calling you back. And who couldn't love Leonard's wink ?

Albeit they're very different, I love this video in the same way as I love this Norwegian one, that is also effortless and beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NEU6Xf ... re=related


~ Lizzy

[sturgess66]

Interesting article about Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -
http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/exegesi ... allelujah/

A Cold and a Broken “Hallelujah”
by Patton Dodd

Leonard Cohen’s song, baptized by American Idol.

You don’t really care for music, do you?

That’s the question put to a brokenhearted lover in the first verse of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” This week, on the occasion of another American Idol season finale, it’s a fitting question for the show itself. “Hallelujah” has been performed on television’s most-watched show four times in the last few seasons, which is but part of the song’s recent surge in popularity. In 2008, it was turned into a hit single in the United Kingdom by Alexandra Burke, the winner of The X Factor (another reality show produced by Idol-creator Simon Cowell). Versions of the song have been used in everything from Shrek to episodes of The West Wing and The OC. But it was not until last week’s much-ballyhooed performance by “American Idol” finalist Lee DeWyze that it became clear just how much the show is managing to corrupt Cohen’s complicated song.

“Hallelujah” makes ironic use of its title (which means something like “praise Yahweh”) as it converges a remembrance of lost love with two biblical accounts of powerful men, David and Samson, who were chosen by God and felled by sex. Like its biblical source material, “Hallelujah” has had many authors and many versions. Cohen recorded the song in 1984, then sang various versions while on tour throughout the 1980s. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale revised and reproduced the song in 1991, culling a canonical translation from reams of lyrics sent to him by Cohen, who had at one point written 80 full verses. In 1994, Jeff Buckley released the most fully realized version—more than anyone, Buckley merged the song’s biblical irony with its sensuality. His track, with its quiet but bold guitar work, is the one most recent renditions reference, including those on American Idol.

But those renditions manage to sing another “Hallelujah” entirely. American Idol contestants sing only the first and third verses of Cale’s version—a compression that is necessary for TV time but that is also thematically selective. Those verses contain key lines: “Well I heard there was a secret chord / That David played and it pleased the Lord / But you don’t really care for music, do you?” And: “I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch / But love is not a victory march / It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.” But taken out of context, these lines don’t manage to make any sense.

Leaving aside the fact that the “cold” and “broken hallelujah,” as DeWyze sang it last week, was actually a soaring, full-throated roar, what’s almost entirely lost in American Idol covers of the song are the two qualities Cale and Buckley highlighted: specific biblical imagery and intense sexuality. Those qualities are anchored in the song’s second, fourth, and fifth verses. King David’s lust and bathing-beauty affair are merged with a reference to Delilah’s cutting of Samon’s hair. Sexual ecstasies—recalled with pain and longing—are compared to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Finally, the frustration of lost love is framed by a crisis of faith: “Maybe there’s a God above / But all I’ve ever learned from love / Was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.” As rock songs go, “Hallelujah” is rather long (even in its condensed Cale version), and these verses work largely because they take their time, building on one another gradually around a chorus that offers a haunting repetition of the song’s titular term.

“Hallelujah” is not, as DeWyze conceived it on American Idol, a shout of praise. It is too confused to shout, too self-concerned to praise. Cohen’s song is disturbing stuff. The Buckley version always leaves me reflective and bothered, if aesthetically uplifted. “Hallelujah” manages to be a psalm, a lament, and a paean to romantic ecstasy all at once. And like Psalms, Lamentations, and Song of Songs, it manages to do so while drawing on the rich and messy personal histories of the Bible’s most notables. That’s the hard-fought lyrical production that has sustained the song, and that will—of course—make it outlast Idol. (Who won last season, again?) In the meantime, the widely viewed iterations of “Hallelujah” on “Idol” are turning the song into a confused gospel ballad, one that rushes to the chorus’ repetition of “hallelujah” without having earned the crushing irony that the word, in Cohen’s reckoning, is intended to produce. Simon Cowell says he asked DeWyze to perform “Hallelujah” last week because he loves the song, and I’m sure he does. (He does not own publishing rights, as had been rumored.) I suppose it’s too much to ask that he’d respect the song, too.

Of course, Idol is all about singers and their voices, and not so much about the actual songs they sing. That’s what makes the “Hallelujah” phenomenon so strange—on Idol, the song is rising in popularity in spite of its way with words. But, again, that rise is made possible by concisions that re-create Cohen’s song and reject its unique lyrical content. Lee DeWyze has pipes, and he has soul, and his cover of Cohen last week didn’t do any damage to his chances of winning the competition. I just hope it buys him the opportunity, someday soon, to sit in a studio and make sense of the song.

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[dick]

MTV Newsroom 05-28-10

Last year, Bruce Springsteen put the nail in the coffin of Giants Stadium, the uncomfortable behemoth that hosted football games for the Giants and Jets (as well as any number of massive concerts and events) for decades. This season sees the introduction of the new home for both teams (called, inventively, New Meadowlands Stadium), and what better way to christen a new space in New Jersey than with Bon Jovi? The band kicked off their summer tour with the first of three shows in East Rutherford on Wednesday night (May 26), breaking out a parade of their massive hits for the over 55,000 hardcore fans who packed the new stadium. In one of the night's highlights, the band turned the amps down a bit so they could run through a stirring version of Leonard Cohen's elegiac "Hallelujah," which was sandwiched in between killer Bon Jovi ballads "Lay Your Hands on Me" and "I'll Be There for You." Based on the number of empties left behind in the parking lot after the show, a good time was clearly had by all.


Linda and I get to experience the new venue in June for Eagles, Dixie Chicks, and Keith Urban – (June 10)

[sturgess66]

Oh -

The exquisite suppleness of 2006 Olympic silver-medalist Sasha Cohen was highlighted in her glides, leg-lifts and backbends to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

Skating stars heat up the ice at KeyArena
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/e ... =head_main




I think "exquisite" should be relocated and placed before "Hallelujah."

[Rain]

Wow.....this skating thing I gotta see. I missed it. Is it on YouTube? I've been under a rock lately (actually sick)....and missed a lot. By the way, Mr. Cohen is great for soothing the sick.....even if you have a headache that lasts for 4 days straight.....

SSSSSIIIIIGHHHHHHHHHHHHH................I just saw the skating video on YouTUbe. Why don't they ever use LEONARD'S version? But again, I say, at least someone as young as Sasha gets exposed to the song itself, through Jeff Buckley's (I think) rendition.

You still can't top the original........