the words to hallelujah by leonard cohen

Soon after leaving the retreat, he learned that Dreamworks was making a computer animated film, Shrek, in which they planned to use Hallelujah, with Shrek lamenting about the captive Princess Fiona. In 1994, Cohen, suffering from excessive drinking and depression, moved for five years into a Buddhist monastery in California. It needed John Cale with a slightly different version for the song to gain greater recognition, and then Jeff Buckley, who in 1993 was signed by Columbia Records, albeit under a different boss.

Cohen himself performed it at the end of the 1980s, again with no real success. Photograph: Maximum Film/AlamyĪfter its rejection, Hallelujah was sung at a few concerts by Bob Dylan, but to no great acclaim. Shrek: the 2001 film’s use of Hallelujah led to many cover versions. Yes, it’s obscure – like a bird flying round the room.” skip past newsletter promotion But it is such a riddle such a symbolic poem. He would play different versions in front of me. She recalled: “We’d have coffee together in the morning before he’d start work on it.

Lines such as “When David played, his fingers bled” are shown as abandoned.Ĭohen recorded the date of his first encounter with Issermann in his notebooks. Later versions were more spiritual, and sometimes sexual. Hallelujah began its life with a religious slant, reflecting Cohen’s Jewish heritage, with allusions to King David and Bathsheba (“The secret chord that David played”) as well as Samson and Delilah. While Cohen never spoke vitriolically about the blow in public, in one clip in the film he talks of being told by Columbia: “We know you are great, but don’t know if you are any good”. “He was absolutely crushed,” says French photographer Dominique Issermann, who lived with Cohen while he was writing the album and had sat in on the studio recording.

Photograph: Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images Cohen in 2009 in Los Angeles: Hallelujah became ‘an international hymn – religious or otherwise’.

The words to hallelujah by leonard cohen