Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is a pseudo-religious sham promising fake redemption.

I’M NOT SAYING you can’t like Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. I’M JUST SAYING you like it for all the wrong reasons.

Leonard Cohen is a master songwriter. And I’ve got nothing against Cohen himself – he lived a life of high poetry, contemplation, womanizing, creation and the pursuit of darkness, until his death in 2016. Also, I’m not a Leonard aficionado so I can’t give you his Top 5 Bottom 5 songs or albums. But I do know that his most famous song, Hallelujah, is an overrated, senseless piece of pap that has fooled listeners into thinking it is more weighty than the superficial fantasy it is.

Cohen released Hallelujah in 1984, from his Various Positions album. The original version of the song – a basic love song that never charted – is not what I have a beef with. It’s Cohen’s rewritten lyrics – rambling about chord progressions and biblical allusions – that make me feel dirty. And what’s more annoying: these feebleminded lyrics – that even Cohen was admittedly dispassionate about – are the lyrics that became famous, with over 300 known cover versions, including John Cale and Jeff Buckley, who made it sexy to sing stupid words.

Matter of fact, it was Cale’s version in 1991 that shot the song into public consciousness, and Buckley’s version that shot up the charts in 2007, ten years after Buckley’s death, which meant that Cohen’s final years were spent praising his royalties. These two COVERS are responsible for the song’s popularity, not Cohen’s version. I mean, Leonard Cohen didn’t write the cheeky lyrics to Hallelujah as a pseudo-religious sham promising fake redemption. That’s the promise YOU burdened it with. Even Buckley described his version as an “hallelujah to the orgasm” – which reminds me, ladies, you can’t pretend holiness when you’re diddling yourself.

The most popular version of Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” is really a cover of a cover.
— Carly Mallenbaum, USA Today.

“Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord…”
[Secret, “how”? Like no musicians know what it is – it’s a J-chord or something? Or secret as in, we know all the chords that exist, we just don’t know which one pleases Jesus?

“But you don’t really care for music, do you?”
[Wait–you were just about to gossip about the secret chord and then out of nowhere, you presume that I don’t care for music? Hey, don’t tell me what *I* care for? It’s not music that I don’t care for – it’s cockamamie religion.

“It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth…”
[So after presuming I don’t care for music, you just gonna barge ahead and talk about music anyway – And what about the fourth chord – Is that the secret one? No wait, the fifth–is that it? Which one is it? The suspense is killing me.]

“The minor fall, the major lift…”
[More chords? And why are you suddenly getting all meta and telling me the progression? Just tell me David’s “secret chord” and let’s get outa here! And where’s the first chord anyway – it doesn’t start on the 4th or the 5th, it starts on the 1st, the tonic (C). The lyrics “It goes like this” are over the 1st chord!

“The baffled king composing Hallelujah.”
[And what about this major 3rd as a 7th?  Why’d you miss telling me about that one? Is that why the king is baffled? Or is he baffled because the music is being channeled through him, like Robert Plant writing Stairway To Heaven? Dictated – by Satan – who is a known lover of rock and roll. Our parents from the 50s told us so. And why is the king “baffled” anyway? Like it’s sooo hard to come up with this I –IV–V progression.

Cohen reportedly bashed his head against the floor trying to write these lyrics. Really? How about: “The Drama Queen composing Hallelujah”?

And you’re not impressing anyone with your worldly knowledge of I-IV-V-vi, the most basic combination of Westernized tonal modulations. You know which demographic of musicians is impressed with your theory prowess? Nine-year-olds.

Rule for Songwriters: The more serious you LOOK, the more serious you’ll be TAKEN…

Now let’s all get these facts straight: King David didn’t really compose any piece called Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen did. And Cohen is gaslighting us that it comes from David’s era. According to myth, David lived around 1035 BCE, and Pythagoras only invented the octave scale in 600 BCE. And about 1000 CE Guido D’Arezzo established the scale we know now,so music from David’s era – to our modern ears – would sound like a dissonance of weird pagan intervals, certainly not a nice clean 4th and 5th.

Cohen’s song goes on to timidly promise some kind of vicarious redemption to broken souls IF you subscribe to it as a prayer of hope. First of all, none of this is real! There is no “Lord” you need to praise except JON Lord, and that second famous verse about David and Bathsheba and Samson and Delilah – all biblical fictions! They’re moral fables, like Jesus and Satan. And even the first line of the second verse: “Your faith was strong but you needed proof” – if you need proof, then by definition, your faith is WEAK, which is correct scientific methodology – don’t believe in anything unless you have evidence. Did Cohen accidentally step into reality?

There is no heft here, no gravitas, there’s no solemnity or somberness, you don’t have to sing Hallelujah like you’re about to have a heart attack or change a tire; artists and scholars don’t have to twist their knickers into sanctimonious erudition over its moral depth. Because there IS none.

And there’s no secret chord.

END