Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

I don’t watch the television series “The X Factor”, but I know from the news that this year’s competition was won by Alexandra Burke with a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.
Now this is a song I love. Although first recorded in 1984, I first came across it only when it was used in an episode of my favourite television series “The West Wing”. This version by Jeff Buckley occurs in the final episode of series three. Later I really enjoyed the version by K.D. Lang on her CD “Hymns Of The 49th Parallel”.
For all my admiration of “Hallelujah”, I’m not at all sure that I fully understand the lyrics. Clearly it is a tale of lost love but this piece calls it “a perfect secular hymn”.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Cultural issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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