The song that gave Leonard Cohen the ultimate “revenge”
While he’s not necessarily considered to be an artist with tons of mainstream appeal, you can’t deny that Leonard Cohen managed to carve a career for himself by becoming every other songwriter’s favourite songwriter.
There’s a stark simplicity in his works, and while they often had a bleakness to them, his songs were so emotionally charged and brimming with subtle details that plenty of others have tried to emulate over the years to varying degrees of success. However, while Cohen’s songs have become popular, it’s not necessarily his own versions that have been popularised.
If we’re talking about his own most celebrated works, then his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, is perhaps the one that has stood the test of time the most, with songs such as ‘Suzanne’ and ‘So Long, Marianne’ still easily recognisable in the modern day. Despite these standouts, it’s the record as a whole that many think of when discussing the brilliance of Cohen rather than the individual tracks.
In terms of his most famous song, it’s one that he wrote in 1984 that lives on in infamy, and while people would immediately recognise that track due to its ubiquity, that isn’t because his original recording was widely celebrated. In fact, at the time, it was almost turned away by his label and released into relative obscurity.
‘Hallelujah’ has, of course, been covered by countless other artists in the years since, with Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright and Alexandra Burke delivering perhaps the best-known versions of the song, and that’s not even scratching the surface of how many times it’s received a widely-known rendition.
Not only have other artists performed their own interpretations of the song, but it has also been used in other media. However, Cohen himself always remained pleasantly surprised by its lasting popularity, especially considering he was almost convinced not to release it.
During a 2009 interview with CBC Radio, Cohen reflected upon the legacy of ‘Hallelujah’ and seemed grateful that it had taken on a life of its own. “There was a certain sense that I was happy the song was being used,” he mused.
Adding, “Of course, there were certain ironic and amusing sidebars because the record that it came from was called Various Positions. That record Sony wouldn’t put out, they didn’t think it was good enough. It had some songs like ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’, ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘If It Be Your Will’, but it wasn’t considered good enough for the American market and it wasn’t put out, so there was a certain mild sense of revenge that arose in my heart.”
Furthermore, he looked at the negative side of there being so many different versions of the song, some of which he doesn’t care for, and also how it’s become somewhat overplayed. “I was happy about it,” he added, “But I was just reading a review of a movie called Watchmen that uses it, and it said ‘can we please have a moratorium on ‘Hallelujah’ in movies and television shows?’ and I kind of feel the same way.”
‘Hallelujah’ may only be Cohen’s most famous song because of the numerous covers of it, but it’s still perhaps deserving of this position, and given how it continued to renew interest in him during the latter stages of his career, he’s hardly going to complain about it, especially not the revenge that he managed to exact on the label who turned it away.
