Friday, November 11, 2016

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen : the secret history of a mythical title – Le Figaro

Before you become a hymn of the universal chanted at many ceremonies, the title Hallelujah, whose first version appeared in 1984, has long been ignored by the general public. Back on the extraordinary course of this song.

It is without doubt the prayer profane the most popular in the history of music.It all starts at the edge of the 80′s. At the time of the commencement of its seventh album, Leonard Cohen is going through a crisis of artistic major. The singer is struggling to retrain and feared more than any to appear in the eyes of the fans as obsolete. Recent Songs, his album the most classic, which came out in 1979, not walk. Cohen then goes into a period of questioning which pushes him to reconfigure his writing.

It is in this complicated context that the artist gives birth in the pain of the first version of the text ofHallelujah, in 1980. “I filled two notebooks and I remember being found at the Royalton Hotel in New York, in their underwear on the carpet, me bumping the head on the ground as I bemoan my fate of not being able to finish this song, î he told reporters asking him about the genesis of his masterpiece.

A true priesthood for the author, who admitted to Bob Dylan have taken two years to compose this hymn. It should be said that before deciding on the five sublime verses of the final version ofHallelujah, Leonard Cohen would have written no less than… 80.

Their detailed examination confirms the dimension wildly sexual of a text that had become yet one of our songs favorite christmas… beyond the mystical incantation suggested by the title, the biblical references of which the singer sprinkles his text consist of, in reality, an ode to erotic carnal love. A nice after all of the part of the impenitent Cohen, for whom sexuality is still linked to the obsession of original sin…

As reported as early as 2005, the journalist of the Sunday Times Bryan Appleyard, whose remarks are reported by the magazine Les Inrocks, Hallelujah is above all the text of the human weakness vis-à-vis the flesh. A dimension that is certainly remained unnoticed by the studio Dreamworks, who chooses to title the soundtrack of the animated Shrek

The many clues scattered in the text confirm yet this interpétation to say the least, nefarious. The selection of references, first. There is David, the king of the Old Testament, in love with the beautiful Bathsheba, and the sublime temptress, Delilah, who makes his appearance as early as the second verse of the song.

In the praise of the lord sent by Leonard Cohen God, many commentators perceive as an apology diverted from the orgasm… “And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah/And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah…” An interpretation which has never been denied by the canadian singer and confirmed by the recovery that will John Cale a few years later. Using some of the verses had been abandoned by Leonard Cohen, the ex-member of the Velvet Underground book an enriched version of the hymn of which the distinctly more sexual can not be disputed…

A winning bet for Leonard Cohen since this first recovery finally allows the title to access the reputation. Jeff Buckley adds to the eroticism with his interpretation now legendary d’Halleluyah, in which the young artist brings in 1994 with its sensuality demonic and his melancholy absolute.

The beginning of the glory for a title that will now be declined to infinity in tele-hooks musical such asX-factor, turned into the phone ringing or parachuted in series to success (The OC, The West Wing). There are between 180 and 200 times of the title, which would have been the most downloaded in 2004… Since Jeff Buckley, the recovery of the most touching is that of Rufus Wainwright, son-in-law of Leonard Cohen, which book of his or her voice hoarse and broken an interpretation nagging of the title for the original soundtrack of Shreck. A nice nod to the family that allows, in 2001, to re-associate the artist to a song born in the pain and will be very soon been deprived.

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