The Hallelujah Chorus

Leonard Cohen’s initially-overlooked hymn to human imperfection has become an indisputable Anthem Of Our Time. “It might be the most perfect song in the world,” U2’s Bono tells Alan Light.

IN 1995, U2 SINGER BONO RECORDED A version of Hallelujah for a Leonard Cohen tribute album called Tower Of Song. Of the hundreds of covers of this now-global anthem, this one stands as a unique approach – Bono murmurs the lyrics over a trip-hop beat by Howie B, with a trombone darting in and out of the mix, and breaks into a full falsetto for the chorus. It is not, it is fair to say, one of the most beloved renditions of the song. When I spoke to Bono for my book about Hallelujah’s rise to prominence, he instantly owned up to his misfire. “I wasn’t sure why I agreed to do this interview,” he said, “but then I remembered that I needed to apologise to the world. I didn’t just let myself down, or my parents, I let the whole school down…” But it wasn’t the least likely twist in the tale of Hallelujah – risen from the obscurity of Cohen’s synthy 1984 album Various Positions, via versions by John Cale (whose rendition, with re-edited lyrics, began life on another tribute album, 1991’s I’m Your Fan, before finding a larger audience in the film Shrek 2); Jeff Buckley, on 1994’s iconic Grace album; and Alexandra Burke on the 2008 series of the UK’s talent juggernaut X Factor (it was that year’s UK Christmas Number 1 single). Though imperfect, Bono’s version was another staging post in the world’s rediscovery of the song. As he explained to me, it reflected a period of personal pain – emerging in a sense of conflict arguably truer to Hallelujah than many of the more conventionally beautiful covers – and an admiration for Leonard Cohen that went way, way back…

“I’VE BEEN A LEONARD COHEN FAN SINCE I was 14. He played Dublin in 1974 and I didn’t make it, I couldn’t get the money to go. People forget that it was against the law to listen to Leonard in the days of punk. Some of the most brutal, eye-gouging music criticism was directed at him in those years. He found irony, ironic context to place his meditations, with humour – and eventually he was reborn as a humorist ladies’ man. As a student of the sound, I understood the resonances of his incantation in Hallelujah and his invocation of the Old Testament David. I’ve thought a lot about David – the first bluesman, the first God heckler. As well as shouting praises to God, he was also shouting admonishment – “Why has thou forsaken me?”, that’s the beginning of the blues. And he was a harp player. I think I understood the vaingloriousness of Hallelujah’s lyric, the hubris in it. It’s one of those rare things, it might be the most perfect song in the world. Of course, there’s also Kris Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through The Night and there’s Amazing Grace – but they’re really all the same subject, so maybe that’s why I say those. I don’t really remember being conscious of the Jeff Buckley version. I’m not sure I would have done it myself if I had been, though maybe that’s why I did the whisper – if you can’t take true flight and do his kind of Sufi singing, maybe stick to recitation. But his version became very important to me in the years that followed, so much that I forgot that I’d even attempted it. Why did it take so long for people to notice Hallelujah? It looks now like it was so obviously a great painting, like a Rothko – you can sit in that room in the Tate Gallery and just go, “Well, there ya go, it’s a nice feeling in here,” and not realise that this is a really important moment for you, and really hard-won by the artist to get here. If you didn’t stop, you might miss the complexity of it. But in the end, this kind of thing just does come through. Jeff’s version really helped, of course, and it became very popular. I think when I recorded the song, I may have needed to hear it more than I needed to sing it. It was one of those moments – you take a day out, you’re desperate, even wretched, and in desperate need of these words and that’s the only excuse. So I did it as beat poetry, with my fat lady voice, in falsetto for the chorus – it’s remarkable I could even get up to that at the time. I remember wanting to fit in as much of the text as possible, making it about the words. I do think it was reverent in all the right ways. The lyric explains it best – there’s “the holy and the broken hallelujah” and mine was definitely the broken one. Leonard did send me a penknife after this version came out, and a book of his lyrics, signed “You take Manhattan, I’ll keep Berlin.” Hallelujah is a very powerful word, a big idea, and I’ve hung onto it very tightly over the years. Later, we did start doing a bit of Hallelujah with U2 – it has on occasion come out of me on-stage. On-stage, you have all kinds of distracting thoughts, good or nothing, sometimes filled with dark thoughts. Praising God, Jah, Yahweh – some of the brightest moments of clarity I’ve ever had have been on-stage, and also some terrible times, and I’ve always used that word if it fits in a place. It’s an amazing word to say, it’s its own kind of mouth music just singing it. I noticed that when Leonard was singing Hallelujah the last time I saw him, he was trying to take it back – trying to remind us of the irony, the humour in it, to take some of the portentousness out and bring it back to his original humility and humour. He performed it like Lucky in Waiting For Godot, taking off his hat. It had all of its richness without any robes, any grandeur. The thing to watch for is when people make Hallelujah too lofty. He was wrestling it back to earth, like one of Blake’s angels, tethered to the ground.”