What did Jeff Buckley think ‘Hallelujah’ was about?
There was a specific energy to Jeff Buckley‘s shows, almost like stumbling upon a lively pub in the middle of the night’s events, beckoned by a livelihood that sweeps you up in a cacophony of warmth and emotion. Those grumbles immediately stopped, however, the second he began to play ‘Hallelujah’.
When Leonard Cohen first wrote the beloved classic, he was drowning in some 80 or so verses that were nearly impossible to place into some coherent order. The final product, however, wasn’t so much a laborious task as an immense labour of love, blending Cohen’s varying versions of euphoria into one simple lyric, one simple melody.
Somehow, however, and as is the case with most songs that accrue a legacy on their own, ‘Hallelujah’ became one of the most misunderstood songs in history, some attributing its longevity to Cohen’s themes of religion, some saying it’s about more simple or primal pleasures, like romance, love, or sex.
It’s easy to see why this is the case, given the extensive religious and spiritual imagery that Cohen poured into it, as well as the more literal types of so-called “hallelujah” moments that categorise more modern human experiences, like relationships, intimacy, and seeking respite – or escape – from the more complex challenges of life itself.
But Cohen once made it clear precisely what the song is about, saying, “This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah’.”
The chorus itself, therefore, becomes a chant not only for the countless versions of “hallelujah” one could identify with, but the relief of stealing one moment amid the chaos, one moment unified with yourself and with others, in whatever way that might be, whether physical, literal, or in the spiritual way of feeling a fleeting, blissful moment.
Many have their own reasons for loving the song, like Bob Dylan, who once said that it was “the point-blank I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself” aspect of the music that he resonated with the most. He also, like Jeff Buckley, seemed to linger on the way it captures a glimpse of the human existence in just a few quick minutes, anchoring what Dylan described as “a beautifully constructed melody that steps up, evolves, and slips back, all in quick time”.
For Buckley, however, enriching the essence of the song hinged on what, exactly, “hallelujah” meant to him. When he started performing the song in the 1990s, you couldn’t hear a pin drop, likely because people were taking it to mean whatever it was they read into it, immersed in their own “enthusiasm”, as Cohen once said, about what it actually meant. Buckley, on the other hand, had one vision, which was also one of the reasons why he initially hoped that Cohen would never get to hear it.
As he admitted to OOR magazine, “Whoever listens carefully to ‘Hallelujah’ will discover that it is a song about sex, about love, about life on earth. The hallelujah is not a homage to a worshipped person, idol or god, but the hallelujah of the orgasm. It’s an ode to life and love.”
All things considered, Buckley’s sexual homage isn’t actually that dissimilar from Cohen’s original vision. In fact, Cohen had alluded to such themes from the off, though cushioned them with other musings about religion, connection, unity, and reaching a state of peace, however temporary. Buckley merely took this a step further, wrapping up all of those elements into one simple pleasure, a “secret chord”, if you will, tucked beneath the ambiguous surface-layer that keeps people coming back.
