The Holy or the Broken

by Alan Light

  Somehow, no matter how frequently it appears, “Hallelujah” has maintained its ineffable aura of cool. The combination of Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley—the brooding poet and the doomed golden boy, the visionary artist and the gorgeous prodigy, two icons of love and sex and mystery for multiple generations—is a magical pairing. Buckley’s recording may not have registered with the public at first, but he was the ideal conduit to relay the song to the world. Even as both artists have become more familiar over time, identifying yourself as a fan of either singer, much less both of them, still holds an untarnished allure, an insider’s hipness.

  “Now it looks like it was so obvious, but there are lots of instances of people walking by something extremely special and not stopping to take note,” said Bono. “Like with a great painting, like a Rothko—you can sit in that room in the Tate Gallery and just go, ‘Well, there ya go, there’s a nice feeling in here,’ and not realize that this is a really important moment for you, and it was really hard-won by the artist to get here and find you. If you didn’t stop and just think ‘Okay, that’s a great lyric,’ you might miss the complexity. But in the end, this kind of thing just does come through.”

  David Miller of Il Divo thinks that it took time for the world to discover “Hallelujah” because it was so out of step with the era in which it was first created. “I think people just weren’t ready to hear it,” he said. “It’s so in tune with an ethereal vibration, and the ’80s was not an especially ethereal time. But then a bit of a shift happened, and people realized that maybe there’s more to it than the house, car, computer, the things they own, and they were ready to hear different things.

  “It’s the same reason young people don’t generally go to the opera—they haven’t lived enough. You have to feel that bruising of your heart to relate to the tragedy in opera, to these big, huge emotions on the stage. It’s really for people who have lived forty, fifty, sixty years, and gotten to the point in life where you realize its brevity, and the importance of relationships and family. That’s the fragile and tender place where songs like ‘Hallelujah’ come from.” The world might have needed to catch up with “Hallelujah,” but unlike opera, this “fragile and tender” core of the song resonates—and this was the magic of Jeff Buckley’s interpretation—with youth as well.

  “It’s welcome proof that a great song will endure somehow,” said Michael McDonald. “Even if it doesn’t get the attention at first, it can capture the public imagination if the right artist can do it. Sometimes it takes the right combination to come along and make that connection.”

  “The song keeps coming up, and every time it’s like it’s brand-new,” said Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy. “It sounds new every time you hear it. It’s a rare example of a true modern folk song. I was reading about ‘La Cucaracha,’ which is this folk nursery rhyme from the 1500s. There are hundreds of thousands of iterations, as a political song or a kids’ song, it evolves and gets employed in all these different ways. That’s how a lot of folk standards happen, but not a lot of modern songs do that.”

  The artists who are singing “Hallelujah,” and not only the ones you might initially expect, are usually very aware of its transformation. They know from experience that as the song has penetrated deeper and deeper into public consciousness, the personal baggage it gathers, the associations and affiliations, all have an impact on the way it is received.

  “I think that the point of the song has maybe gotten lost a little bit along the way,” said Lee DeWyze. “But it’s one of those songs that really evokes emotions in people, whether they’re religious or not. So many people say to me, ‘I’m not a religious person, but when you play that song, I feel like you’re connecting spiritually with everybody here,’ or ‘We had your version played at my father’s funeral,’ ‘We had your version played at our son’s baptism,’ things like that. The song really means a lot to them.”

  Though Alexandra Burke was initially skeptical about performing “Hallelujah” on The X Factor, since her history-making success with it, she has learned firsthand both the power of the song and the contradictions it embodies. “My pastor recently asked me to perform ‘Hallelujah’ for New Year’s, and I wondered what he was hearing in it,” she said. “It is a dark, deep song, but because of that word, certain people will only notice and concentrate on that.”

  A composer like Leonard Cohen invites a very close consideration of his lyrics, but it’s usually a melody that first connects with most listeners. So let’s give the final word to the magical tune of this song. As befits Cohen’s limited vocal range, “Hallelujah” is easy to sing. The song is built on a simple, gentle ascending and descending figure (“the minor fall, the major lift”). There’s plenty of room for more gifted singers (Renée Fleming) to explore, but nothing to intimidate a less-conventional vocalist (Willie Nelson).

  Listening to all those kids who filmed themselves for YouTube, or people singing it in languages I don’t speak a word of, it quickly becomes apparent that unless a singer takes a genuinely risky approach to reworking the arrangement—see Bono and Susan Boyle, an odd couple if ever there was one—as long as he or she has any voice at all, it’s very hard to make “Hallelujah” sound bad.

  “It almost doesn’t matter who’s doing it; it’s always nice to hear the song,” said Norah Jones, who performed it once in 2003 at a charity event organized by Don Henley. “Yeah, it’s overdone, but it doesn’t really matter. The melody is so beautiful you just don’t want to interpret too much.”

  “There’s a lot of simplicity in the tune,” said Jake Shimabukuro, “a lot of space, which for me as a player is inviting, because there’s room to add things without compromising the melody or the spirit of the tune. There’s a lot of space for contemplation, a lot of space for whoever wants to be a part of the song. And that’s a very rare thing. A song like ‘Hallelujah’ takes you off the grid and gives you back some of that space that we’re all missing in our lives.”

  And there is simply no getting around the power of that chorus: one word, charged with centuries of meaning, delivered ironically or solemnly or both. It serves as a prayer, perhaps the great prayer of the modern age, regardless of one’s relationship to God. One look at the tears streaming down the faces of a sea of kids singing along with Leonard Cohen at the Coachella Festival demonstrates the ability of this song, with one age-old word at its center, to transport listeners in a way that organized religion has largely failed to do for this generation.

  “It’s an amazing word to say,” said Bono. “It’s its own kind of mouth music just singing it. Praising God, Yah, Yahweh—it’s a very powerful word, a big idea, and I’ve hung on to it very tightly over the years.”

  • • •

  Are there any more places for “Hallelujah” to travel, any more worlds still left for this song to conquer? In March 2012, Leonard Cohen, flush with the success of the Old Ideas album, announced that he would be returning to the road, with a tour beginning in Europe in August and then heading to North America in the fall. Having traversed the globe from 2008 to 2010 as a means to secure his retirement, he decided that he didn’t want to retire, after all—that he enjoyed the rhythm of touring and would like to give it another go.

  “I hadn’t done anything for fifteen years,” he said at the London playback of Old Ideas. “I was sort of like Ronald Reagan. In his declining years he remembered he’d had a good role. He’d played the role of a president in a movie. I kind of felt that somewhere I’d been a singer. Being back on the road reestablished me as a worker in the world, and that was a very satisfactory feeling.” As of the most recent tour schedule, Cohen’s seventy-eighth birthday falls in between dates in Istanbul and Bucharest.

  The major piece left to be determined in Jeff Buckley’s legacy is whether the biopic ever actually gets made. If there is still a project that could launch “Hallelujah” to yet another altitude in any sort of predictable way, the long-delayed film would be it. There’s no way to know when or how or
if it will be completed, but a draft of the Mystery White Boy script by screenwriter Ryan Jaffe reveals the song turning up at two key moments in the movie.

  Early on, Buckley sings it in a Sin-é-esque café during a power outage. “A friend played me John Cale’s version of this song and I fell in love with it,” he says, “so I thought I’d play you my version.” He gives a revelatory performance that the script describes as “a discovery for Jeff as much as the audience—he’s got it.”

  Later in the film, he’s annoyed by constant requests for the song, but plays it in Australia to honor drummer Matt Johnson’s final show. He sits behind the drum and plays the beat with his foot and then starts the guitar part. He plays, Jaffe writes, “the saddest and loneliest version of the song you can imagine. Almost an anti-‘Hallelujah.’ ” Buckley yells at the crowd to sing along: “You’ve been shouting for it all goddamn night. Sing it loud next time. Hit me. Hit me. Hallelujah!”

  Maybe “Hallelujah” has plateaued; k. d. lang announced over lunch that she was going to quit performing it within the year. “Everyone’s singing it, so maybe it’s time to let it go,” she said. “You know what it’s like? It’s like that scene in Of Mice and Men where the guy is petting the mouse and he kills it because he loved it so much. It’s kind of like that.”

  Or maybe it will rise again, performed by an artist too unlikely to imagine (Willie notwithstanding, there hasn’t been an authoritative country take on it), or at an event of great triumph or great tragedy, and reach a new audience in a new context that inspires more memories and associations. There’s no way to see the future for this song, because there is no precedent for the trajectory it has already had.

  A venerated creator. An adored, tragic interpreter. An uncomplicated, memorable melody. Ambiguous, evocative words. Faith and uncertainty. Pain and pleasure. A song based in Old Testament language that a teen idol can sing. An erotically charged lyric fit for a Yom Kippur choir or a Christmas collection. Cold. Broken. Holy.

  “There is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones,” Leonard Cohen once said. “When one looks at the world, there’s only one thing to say, and it’s hallelujah. That’s the way it is.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, an apology: With hundreds of versions of “Hallelujah” floating around out there in audio and video land, it would be foolish to try to cover them all. So if your own favorite performance of the song isn’t included in the previous pages, I hope that you at least found some new ways to think about its meaning to you.

  Thank you, Leonard Cohen—first, of course, for writing the song, and also for giving this project your blessing. Thanks to Robert Kory for all of the support and assistance. The encouragement and enthusiasm of Tiffany Shipp helped get, and keep, the ball rolling.

  Thanks to everyone quoted in these pages for being so generous with their time and thoughts. And thanks to all of the people who helped me speak to such great subjects, and offered insights of their own: Ambrosia Healy, Lori Earl, Lauretta Charlton, Chris Douridas, Perry Greenfield, Olga Makrias, Ron Shapiro, Sonia Muckle, Josh Page, Char Grant, Jamie Abzug, Sarah Usher, Felice Ecker, Joel Amsterdam, Tom Muzquiz, Dustin Addis, Kevin Chiaramonte, Mark Cunningham, David Brendel, Jack Rovner, Cem Kurosman, Fran DeFeo, Meredith Plant, Mary Moyer, Sarah Avrin, David Browne, Suzanne Lang Middaugh, Ramon Parkins, and Seth Faber.

  Love and deepest gratitude to Jennifer Goldsmith Adams and Emily Zemler for introductions, input, and everything else.

  Sarah Lazin is so much more than an agent—she is a friend, an editor, and a fount of wisdom, and I’m so lucky that she puts up with me. Thanks also to Manuela Jessel at Sarah Lazin Books.

  From before Day One, Alice White was a necessary cheerleader (“Rock Chalk,” etc.) for this idea. She then went on to be a transcriber, researcher, and fact-checker extraordinaire, and a valuable second set of eyes whenever I needed one.

  I still can’t quite believe that Peter Borland at Atria read the proposal for this strange little book, immediately understood it, and said, “Just go do it.” His confidence in me and in my premise was remarkable. Also at Atria, thanks to Daniel Loedel, David Brown, Valerie Vennix, and Steve Breslin.

  Everyone at Artists Den Entertainment—Mark Lieberman, Anji Chandra, Devon Wambold, Clare Flynn, and John Hanle—allowed me the space and time to get this thing done, while they also kept busy producing the best live music on television.

  For all that they’ve taught me about writing and music and writing about music, eternal gratitude to Anthony DeCurtis, Sia Michel, Diane Cardwell, and Danyel Smith.

  For too many reasons to mention, love and thanks to Hal Brooks, Keith Hammond, Mike Paranzino, Dick Schumacher, Mike Errico, Dan Carey, James Shifren, Bronwen Hruska, Johanna Schlegel, Shannon Carey, Sam Kramer, Rob Johnson, Sarah Wilson, Elysa Gardner, and Joe Angio.

  Love always to Irwin, Janet, and Sharon Light, my perfect family who always encouraged me to make a life and a career out of the things I most cared about as a teenager.

  This book, like everything I do every day, is for Suzanne McElfresh and Adam Light. You are the reason for my hallelujah.

  Selected “Hallelujah” Discography

  Hundreds of artists have performed the song live (Bob Dylan, Regina Spektor, U2, etc.), and many hundreds more have posted videos on YouTube. There are also numerous other recordings, but this list includes only those versions that were commercially released and were mentioned within the preceding pages.

  Leonard Cohen, Various Positions, 1984, Columbia

  John Cale, I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, 1991, EastWest

  John Cale, Fragments of a Rainy Season (live album), 1992, Hannibal

  Jeff Buckley, Grace, 1994, Columbia

  Leonard Cohen, Cohen Live, 1994, Columbia

  Bono, Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, 1995, A&M

  Rufus Wainwright, Shrek: Music from the Original Motion Picture (soundtrack), 2001, DreamWorks

  Chris Botti, December, 2002, Sony

  Jeff Buckley, Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition), 2003, Columbia

  Allison Crowe, Tidings, 2004, Rubenesque

  k. d. lang, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, 2004, Nonesuch

  Rufus Wainwright, Live at the Fillmore (bonus DVD included with his album Want Two), 2004, DreamWorks

  Popa Chubby, Big Man Big Guitar: Popa Chubby Live, 2005, Blind Pig

  Espen Lind, Askil Holm, Kurt Nilsen, and Alejandro Fuentes, Hallelujah—Live, 2006, Playroom

  Willie Nelson, Songbird, 2006, Lost Highway

  Fall Out Boy, Infinity on High (sampled on “Hum Hallelujah”), 2007, Island

  Alexandra Burke, “Hallelujah” (X Factor performance), 2008, Sony

  Il Divo, The Promise, 2008, Syco

  Kate Voegele, “Hallelujah” (digital single), 2008, MySpace/Interscope

  Michael McDonald, Soul Speak, 2008, Universal

  Paramore, The Final Riot! (live CD/DVD; introduction to their own song, also called “Hallelujah”), 2008, Fueled by Ramen

  Alexandra Burke, Overcome, 2009, Sony

  The Canadian Tenors, The Canadian Tenors, 2009, Universal

  Leonard Cohen, Live in London (CD/DVD), 2009, Columbia

  Bon Jovi, Live at Madison Square Garden (DVD), 2010, Island

  Jason Castro, Jason Castro, 2010, Atlantic

  Justin Timberlake (with Matt Morris and Charlie Sexton), Hope for Haiti Now (digital album), 2010, MTV

  k. d. lang, Hallelujah (EP; includes iTunes Exclusive Vancouver Winter Olympics version), 2010, Nonesuch

  Lee DeWyze, “Hallelujah” (American Idol performance; iTunes single), 2010, 19 Recordings

  Leonard Cohen, Songs from the Road (DVD), 2010, Columbia

  Neil Diamond, Dreams, 2010, Columbia

  Renée Fleming, Dark Hope, 2010, Decca

  Susan Boyle, The Gift, 2010, Syco

  Brandi Carlile, Live at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony, 2011, Columbia

  Jake Shimabukuro, Peace Lov
e Ukulele, 2011, Hitchhike

  Michael Bolton, Gems: The Duets Collection, 2011, Legacy

  LINKS

  Visit these websites to watch some of the performances of “Hallelujah” discussed in the book.

  LEONARD COHEN

  http://bit.ly/LeonardCohenSings

  O2 Arena, London, 2008

  JEFF BUCKLEY

  http://bit.ly/JeffBuckleySings

  Bearsville Studios, Woodstock, NY, 1993

  RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

  http://bit.ly/RufusWainwrightSings

  The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 2004

  KATE VOEGELE

  http://bit.ly/KateVoegeleSings

  Solar Powered Plastic Plant studios, Los Angeles, CA, 2009

  BON JOVI

  http://bit.ly/BonJoviSings

  Chicago, IL, 2007

  AMANDA PALMER

  http://bit.ly/AmandaPalmerSings

  Factory Theatre, Sydney, Australia, 2007

  IL DIVO

  http://bit.ly/IlDivoSings

  Pula Arena, Pula, Croatia, 2008

  FALL OUT BOY (“Hum Hallelujah”)

  http://bit.ly/FallOutBoySings

  UCF Arena, Orlando, FL, 2007

  ALEXANDRA BURKE

  http://bit.ly/AlexandraBurkeSings

  Music Video, 2008

  ALAN LIGHT, a former editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin magazines, is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Rolling Stone and the director of programming for the public television concert series Live from the Artists Den. Alan is the author of The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys and co-author of Gregg Allman’s bestselling memoir, My Cross to Bear. He is a two-time winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music writing.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  www.SimonandSchuster.com