‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song’ Charts Complicated Route From Creation to Mass Acceptance

It’s the singer, not the song; or is it the other way around? My answer: depends on the song. The 2021 documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song explores the Canadian singer-songwriter and poet’s lifelong search for divine truth and wraps it in an examination of his most famous composition. A meditation on the musical, the sacred and the profane, with a catchy chorus to boot, Cohen would labor over “Hallelujah” for years before its eventual release on an album unavailable in the U.S.  It would take on a second life via numerous cover versions, along the way becoming a vehicle for performative emotion, often stripping the song of its deeper, complex meaning. Based on Alan Light’s 2012 book The Holy or the Broken, it was directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine and is currently streaming on Netflix.        

Cohen was an unlikely musical star. Born in 1934, he came from a prominent Jewish family in Montreal and initially made his name as a poet and novelist. He was over 30 when he decided to become a singer-songwriter and moved to New York City to a chorus of yawns. He came under the tutelage of John Hammond, who discovered Bob Dylan, and signed with Columbia Records. Like Dylan, he was a…unique vocalist but a great songwriter whose lyrics could be funny or tragic, often naughty, occasionally profound. When he wasn’t singing about getting laid, he was wondering what it all meant, often turning to religion to find the answers. 

Music writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman serves as the film’s tour guide and comic relief. First meeting Cohen in the mid ‘70s when he was working for Rolling Stone magazine, he would interview him many times, including an extended clip in a cheap diner which plays throughout the film. Sloman says he was “patient zero” for “Hallelujah.” Cohen told him he had written anywhere from 150 to 180 verses for the song before its completion and showed him the notebooks to prove it. Depending on who he was talking to, Cohen said the song took anywhere from two to seven years to complete.  

Though his faith wavered and wandered through the years, Judaism was central to Cohen’s sense of self. Early in his career he joked about changing his name to September Cohen to make it sound “less Jewish,” immediately negating the effort by keeping his surname and naming himself after Judaism’s holiest month. Sloman contends “Hallelujah” was Cohen’s way of exploring his Jewish roots, saying, “Jewish tradition, I think, you could start studying Kabbalah when you’re 40. You have to wait till you’re 40, to have that life experience to be able to understand Kabbalistic thought.” Cohen would later tell him in an interview, “My goal is to become an elder.”

In its original recording, “Hallelujah” mixes lyrical references to the Old Testament and the challenges of faith with postcards from a relationship, never explaining exactly what it’s about but offering ideas and images to chew on. It first appeared on 1984’s Various Positions, which found Cohen experimenting with modern studio touches and leaning into his mature baritone. Producer John Lissauer thought the album answered label demands for a commercial pop record before noting, “Boy, was I wrong.” Columbia Records refused to release the album in the United States, infamous label boss Walter Yetnikoff saying, “Leonard, we know you’re great but we don’t know if you’re any good.” It was later released independently but the album’s failure weighed heavily on its creators.  Lissauer retired from pop music and Cohen was crestfallen, telling Sloman, “I feel I have a huge posthumous career ahead of me.” He would later sink into depression, retire from the spotlight and spend several years at a Zen Buddhist monastery. 

When Sloman went to see Cohen in concert in 1988, he was shocked to see he had changed the lyrics to “Hallelujah,” making it less about faith and more personal, sensual and secular. It was this later version that former Velvet Underground member John Cale would record for the 1991 tribute album, I’m Your Fan. His gentle solo piano treatment would inspire Jeff Buckley’s version, as heard on his debut record, 1994’s Grace. Buckley’s impassioned vocals and plaintive guitar accompaniment took the song to new emotional heights, made more poignant by his tragic 1997 drowning death at the age of 30. Snatches of Brandi Carlile, Slash sidemen Myles Kennedy and Bono are seen riffing on Buckley’s arrangement see it reaching diminishing returns but it remains in many ways the definitive version of the song.  

Things started getting weird around 2001, when a truncated edit of Cale’s “Hallelujah” cover was featured in the animated comedy Shrek. Director Vickey Jenson seems somewhat ashamed for removing the “the naughty bits” and turning the song into a middle of the road signifier for amorphous spirituality and loss. Renowned douchebag Simon Cowell also loves the song, leading to its inclusion in the reality singing competition television series songbook. A parade of terrible renditions, filled with bombastic arrangements and overwrought vocal gymnastics find the song being repeatedly defiled, its lyrical subtly schmeared over and reduced to a slogan by its giant chorus.   

The song would take on a life of its own, pulled out anytime a big emotional bang was needed in a public setting. We see it being sung at Canadian state funerals, suburban weddings and what appears to be a church service held in a large abandoned factory. Cohen said the song’s eventual success brought about, “a mild sense of revenge” before saying, “I think people ought to stop singing it for a little while.” He kept playing it live, however, up until his final concert in 2013.  Like the history of the song itself,

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song twists and turns, going from being about one thing to another. And while some of its forays are a bit too big and heady to fully elucidate, even over the course of a two-hour documentary, there’s plenty to chew on and think about. Of course, in his interviews and live footage, Cohen’s charisma and genius are on full display. The film also serves as both affirmation and cautionary tale; sometimes the cream really does rise to the top, but if you leave it out for too long, it’ll spoil.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.