From now on, every Friday I plan on taking a song that I enjoy, and either analyzing its meaning, describing what it means to be, how it has effected me, all of the above and more.
Song: Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen
This song is one of my favorites. My favorite version is by Jeff Buckley. The song is about the desperate search for true love and salvation but a man who is unable to find it. In the first verse, the man describes a heavenly chord that could "please the lord" but the women he is in love with doesn't care for music. This questions makes the narrator question what the purpose of art is if he can't express what he is feeling to others. Much of the rest of the song talks about how even though a physical relationship may exist between two people, that does not mean that love exists. In one of my favorite verses of all time, the narrorator concludes that "Maybe there's a god above, and all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you. And it's not a cry you can hear at night, and it's not somebody who's seen the light it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." He is saying that the only thing he has learned from his experiances in love is the pain and heartache it has caused him. He concludes by saying that even though this heartache exists there still is a broken Hallelujah which means "praise the lord." I think that he is telling us by this that he will try to push through his struggles in love to find love and salvation.
As I stated earlier in this post, I enjoy Jeff Buckley's version of this song the most because rather than Cohen and Wainright's smooth melodic flowing renditions, Buckley's is beautiful in a different way. It is choppier, edgier, and darker. It is a perfect depiction of the struggle that the man is actually going through.
Listen to it and tell me what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIF4_Sm-rgQ
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