Hallelujah – story behind the song

Hallelujah - story behind the song

Hallelujah is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen in 1984 on his seventh Studio album, Various Positions. Having started his musical career in the late 60s, Cohen won over fans of folk music with his talent, but already in the late 70s and early 80s, interest in Cohen’s work faded. Anticipating the next unsuccessful album, American Columbia Records, where Cohen appeared, refused to record and promote the album Various Positions in the United States, explaining that the artist at that time did not have much recognition in the United States, and the future deafening hit label bosses generally called a disaster. The record in the United States had to be recorded only a few months later at the independent recording Studio Passport Records.

Hallelujah - story behind the song

Cohen began performing the song at his concerts, but neither the song itself nor the entire album made any impression on the listener. In the UK Singles Chart, the song reached only 36th place, and in the US, it did not enter any charts at all. In a review of the album published on June 20, 1985, in Rolling Stone magazine, Hallelujah was not mentioned at all, but the heart with No Companion, Night Comes On, and the Captain were noted. Overall, the review boils down to the fact that “everything he does is worth hearing.” Yes, it was a truly painful, long-term, suffering creation of the song, or rather, the text. Leonard Cohen wrote and rewrote lines of the couplets, being constantly in search of the best option. It got to the point where
I filled two notebooks, and I remember sitting in my underwear on the carpet of my room at the Royalton hotel in new York, banging my head on the floor and saying to myself: I can’t finish the song

Initially and to the end, the only line of the chorus remained unchanged – Hallelujah. Hallelujah – prayerful word of praise to the Jewish God Yahweh (Yah, Jahve, aka Jehovah). Literally translated from the Hebrew, ” praise Yah.” Leonard Cohen was a religious man, coming from a Jewish family, so in his work, he often turned to religious images. He has many songs with intricate biblical scenes, and in the very first versions Hallelujah also has references to the Old Testament story of Samson and his obolstitel traitor Dalida, in the first texts you can find on-line love second king of Israel David to beauty, but another man’s wife Bathsheba, and others. The author himself explained in an interview that Hallelujah is not a song about God and religion, but about the fact that there are actually many types of “Hallelujah”, each with its own “Hallelujah”, and all of them are equivalent.

I deliberately said ” Hallelujah.” There are religious ” hallelujahs”, but there are many others. When you look at the world and your personal life, all you can say is “Hallelujah”… the Literal translation is “glory to the Lord”, but this is not exactly gratitude, but a statement that there is a will that we cannot resist.

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