Part of the song’s ubiquity is to do with the variety of its lyric s.
#Who sings raise a hallelujah series
The song kept turning up in movies and TV series (generally to underline moments of sadness), TV talent-show contestants sang the song (to demonstrate sincerity) and it was used to sell everything from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (minus its words) to neo-Nazism (with completely new words).īy the time of Cohen’s death in 2016, Hallelujah was his most famous song, a song that, like Parry’s Jerusalem, could mean virtually anything to virtually anyone (though nearly always something important). lang included Hallelujah on her all-Canadian album Hymns of the 49th Parallel (2004) and there was no looking back. The Shrek soundtrack album, with Rufus Wainwright now singing the song, sold millions, k.d.
Still, it was only after Buckley’s death in 1997 and then the use of Cale’s version in the film Shrek (2001) that Hallelujah became ubiquitous. Then Jeff Buckley included it on Grace in 1994. John Cale recorded the song for his tribute to Cohen, I’m Your Fan, in 1991. Its first appearance, on Cohen’s album Various Positions, came at the end of 1984 and went practically unnoticed except by Bob Dylan, who performed it at concerts four years later. Though the song is now ubiquitous, it was what they call a ‘‘sleeper’’. It must be, or why would it have been sung – complete with its references to being tied to a kitchen chair – by a large chorus at the memorial service for the victims of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria? Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is a song about a powerful sexual obsession, ennobled by Old Testament references to King David and Bathsheba, and Samson and Delilah. A Leonard Cohen classic is unpicked in this extract from The Song Remains the Same: 800 Years of Love Songs, Laments and Lullabies.
0 kommentar(er)
