#songmeaning #hallelujah
The song commences with scripture and concludes with a confession from a broken man, holding onto the one word with any hope left in it for him. “I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion,” Leonard Cohen said, who wrote the original song.
“The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say, ‘Look, I don’t understand a thing at all - Hallelujah!'” Cohen said. “That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.”
The song was famously later covered by John Cale, Jeff Buckley, and Bob Dylan.
According to Cohen, there were 150 draft verses; this assertion is supported by his notebooks, which contain numerous modifications and additions, as well as by contemporary interviews.