Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

Here comes an exhaustive, perhaps excessive analysis of one of the best pop songs in existence: “Hallelujah”, by Leonard Cohen.

The words and the music are both necessary for the song to produce its effect, as is true of any powerful song. Complicating this discussion is the fact that there are more than one version of this song in existence, including at least two by Cohen himself, as well as variations developed by others who have “covered” the song. I therefore will take the liberty of messing around with the verses myself, as everyone else has.

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord.
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this: The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift –
The baffled king composing Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah.

This business about the “secret chord” is related to a section of 1 Samuel (Old Testament) in which David played the harp for Saul and it soothed him. I don’t believe the business about a “secret chord” is directly from the Bible at all – it’s one of those legends that comes down through time alongside the Bible, in folklore. It is widely supposed that David wrote most of the Psalms, though it’s hard to be sure about that.

So the song starts out being a tale about the Bible and David, and in the third person, and pretty non-confrontational, but all of a sudden and very early in the song we have “you don’t really care for music, do ya?” Now that is HUGE! This song is sung to an ex-lover, as will become more evident later on. The singer still loves the person (woman, usually, though the song can be adapted for a woman to sing) but is also very angry at her. After all, if the lover doesn’t really care for music, and the one who loves her is a musician, isn’t that a cause for anger right there?! Furthermore, despite (or because of) knowing that this ex-lover doesn’t care for music, Cohen forges right ahead, with musical/technical information about the song! Why do what the lover might like? Nothing works with her!

And then we’re back to David, “the baffled king”.

Next verse:

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah.

It would be difficult to know who is referred to with “your faith was strong but you needed proof”, but as soon as we hear “you saw her bathing on the roof” it is clear that now we’ve moved on to the story of David and Bathsheba, which begins, “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.”

David was the king by then, so he had his people find out who she was, and furthermore, he became intimate with her, and also had her husband sent out into the worst part of the battles that were currently being fought, so he would be killed – and he was, and David married Bathsheba and had a son by her (though he had not waited for her husband to be killed to start the celebration). The son’s later death in infancy is generally considered to have been a divine punishment against David, but also, everybody knew about what David had done, including a local prophet, and we know too. He didn’t get away with it!

I don’t think they had kitchen chairs in ancient Israel, did they? And it was Delilah who cut Samson’s hair, not Bathsheba who cut David’s (though it’s a great add-on to this tale). I am sure that all these controlling, destructive things Bathsheba was supposed to have done to David in this song (which are NOT in the Bible) are just depictions of the control over men that women are imagined to have, once the men fall in love with them. (Imagined by men, anyway! Why do you think women have to wear bags over their bodies in some countries?!) And David really was in love with Bathsheba, and it’s pretty clear what was going on when “from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.”

By the way, one might ask why the song begins with David in the third person and then suddenly switches to addressing him in the second person (you) in the second verse. I think the answer is simple. It’s for the rhyme, “overthrew ya”.

Baby I've been here before,
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the Marble Arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah

This verse is a little obscure, but apparently the scene has suddenly shifted from ancient Israel to here and now. I think the “here” mentioned is the state of being lonely, not a specific place. Yet, these simple words convey a great desolation. It’s as though the poet pulls us from the problems of King David to a bleak, poorly-lit, lonely modern apartment, at light-speed no less. I don’t really know what the “flag on the Marble Arch” is, but it feels to me as though his former girlfriend is very active and happy, perhaps participating in demonstrations in Washington Square, but the poet points out that “love is not a victory march”, so he’s not having a great time, even though she is. Here, I think, we are into existential anxiety. Love ends, we die, all that. We love somebody and then they dump us, and it’s torture. Not too obscure when you look at it that way. . . love and its loss are eternal/universal human experiences, and that’s why you get the miserable Hallelujahs....we are glad to be alive, but it’s damn painful sometimes. Thanks, God, for this awful painful life. Thanks a lot!

This gets us to the meaning of ‘Hallelujah”. Officially, it’s supposed to mean “praise Yahweh” (the ancient Hebrews’ name for God). It is said that hallelujah/alleluia is a mantra, though not necessarily from the traditions of India as most mantras are; certainly it has a lulling, yet uplifting verbal quality to it. (‘Amen’ also, but that’s another story.) ‘El’ or ‘Eli’ is also a Hebrew word for God, which shows up everywhere. Beth-El = House of God; El-ijah = Yahweh is God, which I think is also the meaning of Alleluia. (Elijah, Allelujah, not much difference!) This use of El for God is also related to the Arabic ‘Allah’, which as far as I can determine means ‘the (one) God’, and to the Tibetan lha, which means god also, as in Lhasa and ‘Lha ha gyalo’ (the gods have conquered - you’re supposed to say this when you surmount a mountain pass). I wish I’d been able to study a zillion languages. But I digress –

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah
hallelujah, hallelujah.

Ooooh! He’s really mad because she gives him no access to you-know-what any more! Poor poet! And he is hinting that he was a good lover indeed, since the “holy dove was moving too” – he had spiritual experiences with the lovemaking (or thought he did), and the line “every breath we drew was Hallelujah” may be the most beautiful one in the whole song. But if it was all that great, why did she dump him? Hmmm. Men tend to think it’s good for the woman whenever it’s good for them. It’s the way of the world. Hallelujah.

Maybe there's a God above, but all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who out drew ya.
And it's not a cry you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah.

I confess to finding this verse a little hard to follow, with the “shoot at someone who outdrew ya.” Huh? But – I guess if his lover “outdrew” him by dumping him, he is shooting at her with this song and its little digs. And we are back to the existential problems with our cold and broken Hallelujah, just as in the song composed for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet movie back in the 60s:

A rose will bloom, it then will fade;
So does a youth, so does the fairest maid.
(Nino Rota/Eugene Walter)

One of the many nuances expressed in “Hallelujah” is the hopelessness of addressing a lover who has dumped you - nothing you say or do ever works. You can’t get ‘em back, and the person singing this song knows it.

I especially like the handling of the melody in the Hallelujahs. In the verse, the highest note of all is the ‘Ha’ in the final Hallelujah, which always gives rise to an excited feeling; then come the four repetitions: the first one rising in a mildly hopeful manner; second one sinking in a softly sad, yet unresolved way; third one comes back with the same rise as the first; but finally, instead of a symmetrical repeat of Hallelujah #2, we get the elongated melisma and a resigned return to the keynote.

So the Hallelujahs seem to say, Ya win some; ya lose some, ya win some; it all comes to the same thing in the end.

(Only they say it better.)