Why do people consider this song a 'Christmas' song lol

I'm a huge fan of. And love his piece Woke Up This Monring with the Sopranoes and some other songs

But this song is twisted lol in a good way

But nothing about Christmas really

I thought it wa a comedic song about S&M

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I think people can listen to what they want and call it what they want. "My Favorite Things" certainly wasn't a Christmas song in The Sound of Music, but it's played everywhere this time of year.

I think the awe of people standing before the messiah in the manger is just as valid as standing in front of God himself. And that is conveyed in the song.

How is it nothing about Christmas if the lyrics are referring to people from the Bible and the Bible tells the story about Jesus and Jesus is the child that was born in Bethlehem at Christmas?

Oh yeah I forgot. The answer is calenders.

I guess I am just curious who's rendition you were listening to when you posted about Hallelujah.

onlyforaminute said:

It is a pretty song.

I agree, it is a pretty song. It usually makes me teary eyed when I really hear it.

TrivialPursuit said:

I think people can listen to what they want and call it what they want. "My Favorite Things" certainly wasn't a Christmas song in The Sound of Music, but it's played everywhere this time of year.

I think the awe of people standing before the messiah in the manger is just as valid as standing in front of God himself. And that is conveyed in the song.

Do you mean like the audacity of people standing before the messiah in the manger?

Or as in standing before the Messhiah as in being here to welcome him home to Earth?

As in he hasn't even been born yet let alone born again?

As in when he gets here everybody is going to be like "what took you so long?"

I'm really just commenting on this thread because I was subjected to a lot of christmas choir music on television last night and I feel sort of like I feel the next day after a concert having stood too close to the speaker.

I of course think of the song Hallelujah because they used to call my dad "Hal" and "Lelujah" means "seeker of truth and wisdom" according to names.org.

Maybe the magic of Christmas is that our minds are somewhat more open to everything if even just to be in essence more in wonder of things.

Pentatonix does an awesome version.

Pentatonix - Hallelujah (... - YouTube

Hamad said:

I don’t know what the hell this song means, but I’ll give Viola Davis a run for hey money for my own snot & tears action whenever I hear kd lang’s version. That song hits my heart chakra like a ton of bricks.

kd Lang's version is the best I've ever heard. It bring tears to my eyes too.

PJMcGee said:

Lang's version is great, but the definitive version is Jeff Buckley's. We might not even know about the song if not for Buckley.

"we" might not know the song, but Canadians know it and have known it for years because of Cohen and Lang.

SantanaMaitreya said:

I guess I'll just go ahead and tell the anecdote that belongs to this song, which is that Leonard Cohen told Bob Dylan that it took him a year to write Hallelujah, to which Bob replied: I wrote I And I in 15 minutes.

It is a beautiful song, I enjoy many versions of it. I never associated it with Christmas though.

Empress said:

PJMcGee said:

Empress said:

"we" might not know the song, but Canadians know it and have known it for years because of Cohen and Lang.

My point is Lang might not have recorded the song if Buckley hadn't done so ten years earlier. Did you know about it before 1994? Perhaps it is different in Canada, but I think the song languished in obscurity, like a certain song by The Family, until someone really sung the shit out of it, so to speak.

Leonard Cohen is a Canadian icon, so yes, many of us knew the song before anyone else recorded it.

In that case then it can be about EASTER

What about the lyrics specifically connect to the Birth of Christ?

If Hallelujah was not the title or in the chorus, do you think people would connect it to Christmas

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I posted the lyrics by Leonard Cohen,
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Well, maybe there's a God above
As for me all I've ever learned from love
Is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
But it's not a crime that you're hear tonight

heartpeacesheart said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Why do people consider this song a 'Christmas' song lol

I'm a huge fan of. And love his piece Woke Up This Monring with the Sopranoes and some other songs

But this song is twisted lol in a good way

But nothing about Christmas really

.

How is it nothing about Christmas if the lyrics are referring to people from the Bible and the Bible tells the story about Jesus and Jesus is the child that was born in Bethlehem at Christmas?

Oh yeah I forgot. The answer is calenders.

I guess I am just curious who's rendition you were listening to when you posted about Hallelujah.

I agree, it is a pretty song. It usually makes me teary eyed when I really hear it.

TrivialPursuit said:

I think people can listen to what they want and call it what they want. "My Favorite Things" certainly wasn't a Christmas song in The Sound of Music, but it's played everywhere this time of year.

I think the awe of people standing before the messiah in the manger is just as valid as standing in front of God himself. And that is conveyed in the song.

Do you mean like the audacity of people standing before the messiah in the manger?

Or as in standing before the Messhiah as in being here to welcome him home to Earth?

As in he hasn't even been born yet let alone born again?

As in when he gets here everybody is going to be like "what took you so long?"

I'm really just commenting on this thread because I was subjected to a lot of christmas choir music on television last night and I feel sort of like I feel the next day after a concert having stood too close to the speaker.

I of course think of the song Hallelujah because they used to call my dad "Hal" and "Lelujah" means "seeker of truth and wisdom" according to names.org.

Maybe the magic of Christmas is that our minds are somewhat more open to everything if even just to be in essence more in wonder of things.

Empress said:

TrivialPursuit said:

I think people can listen to what they want and call it what they want. "My Favorite Things" certainly wasn't a Christmas song in The Sound of Music, but it's played everywhere this time of year.

I think the awe of people standing before the messiah in the manger is just as valid as standing in front of God himself. And that is conveyed in the song.

sorta, I think the author/creator of something has first and last dibs on what a song means

People can go ahead a create their own song instead of changing someone elses

But movies like 'Sound of Music' are Christmas inspired movies.

White Christmas for example, isn't really about Christmas, My Favorite Things originally was song live on the 1961 Christmas Special on the Garry Moore show, so that made it Christmas/Winter Season, from there on out

A lot of this vibes with Christmas and Winter/holiday

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.I included the lyrics I was refering too.

The lyrics I posted are by Jewish-Canadian Leonard Cohen. I'm hearing his version(the creator of the song Hallelujah) played for Christmas/Christmas music stations

If anything it would be a cool Hanukkah song

peedub said:

I've no experience with this song being associated with christmas, nor of its writer/singer having any association with 'the sopranos'.

Leonard Cohens' version is played during Christmas season/stations etc It cracked me up when I hear the lyrics. Almost sounds like a violent S&M song until you know he is referencing the Torah's David & Bathsheba and Sampson and Deliliah

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Alabama 3 did his song for the Sopranoes series

Leonard Cohen - Woke up t... - YouTube

“He’s not one to share his struggles,” Lissauer continued. “If he wasn’t up to recording, if he was still working on something, then we just wouldn’t go in. But he’d never go in and act out the tormented, struggling artist.”

Leanne Ungar, who engineered Various Positions and has remained part of Cohen’s production team ever since, said that there was a pragmatic reason he would not have been experimenting with lyrics during the recording. “He wouldn’t bring extra verses to the studio because of time pressure,” she said. “The meter is running there.” It seems that the breakthrough in Cohen’s editing – the vision that allowed him to bring the eighty written verses down to the four that he ultimately recorded – was reaching a decision about how much to foreground the religious element of the song.

“It had references to the Bible in it, although these references became more and more remote as the song went from the beginning to the end,” he once said. “Finally I understood that it was not necessary to refer to the Bible anymore. And I rewrote this song; this is the ‘secular’ ‘Hallelujah.’ “

“Hallelujah” as it exists on Various Positions is both opaque and direct. Each verse ends with the word that gives the song its title, which is then repeated four times, giving the song its signature prayer-like incantation. The word hallelujah has slightly different implications in the Old and New Testaments. In the Hebrew Bible, it is a compound word, from hallelu, meaning “to praise joyously,” and yah, a shortened form of the unspoken name of God. So this “hallelujah” is an active imperative, an instruction to the listener or congregation to sing tribute to the Lord.

In the Christian tradition, “hallelujah” is a word of praise rather than a direction to offer praise – which became the more common colloquial use of the word as an expression of joy or relief, a synonym for “Praise the Lord,” rather than a prompting to action. The most dramatic use of “hallelujah” in the New Testament is as the keynote of the song sung by the great multitude in heaven in Revelation, celebrating God’s triumph over the Whore of Babylon.

Cohen’s song begins with an image of the Bible’s musically identified King David, recounting the heroic harpist’s “secret chord,” with its special spiritual power (“And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him” – 1 Samuel 16:23). It was his musicianship that first earned David a spot in the royal court, the first step toward his rise to power and uniting the Jewish people.

...

“But even after the drama, the grasping, conniving, sinful King David is still Israel’s greatest poet, warrior and hope,” Scott continued. “There is so much brokenness in David’s life, only God can redeem and reconcile this complicated personality. That is why the baffled and wounded David lifts up to God a painful hallelujah.”

Following the David and Bathsheba reference, the sexuality of the lyrics is drawn further forward and then reinforced in an image of torture and lust taken from the story of Samson and Delilah – “She tied you to a kitchen chair / she broke your throne, she cut your hair” – before resolving with a vision of sexual release: “and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah!” Both biblical heroes are brought down to earth, and risk surrendering their authority, because of the allure of forbidden love. Even for larger-than-life figures and leaders of nations, the greatest physical pleasure can lead to disaster.

How Leonard Cohen's 'Hall...ling Stone

PJMcGee said:

Empress said:

Leonard Cohen is a Canadian icon, so yes, many of us knew the song before anyone else recorded it.

Well the rest of the world have Buckley to thank for popularizing the song. Cohen was a fine poet, but not much of a singer. Even he said Buckley's version was his favorite.

is his version the changed lyrics?

OldFriends4Sale said:

PJMcGee said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

is his version the changed lyrics?

Buckley first heard the song as it was covered by John Cale. This is what Cale said about his version: “I called Leonard and asked him to send me the lyrics and there were a lot of them, fifteen verses. It was a long roll of fax paper. And then I chose whichever ones were really me. Some of them were religious, and coming out of my mouth would have been a little difficult to believe. I chose the cheeky ones.”

It seems Leonard was writing this piece in the same energy as a Hebrew Psalm

When he began to work on “Hallelujah,” he kept writing verses, filling notebooks with perhaps 180 of them, and the song literally took years to complete. Cohen didn’t do this with other songs. It’s as if he knew that with “Hallelujah” he wasn’t just writing a song but birthing it. Yet part of the alchemy of “Hallelujah” is that, over time, the song it turned into isn’t the one that it started out as. The song took a journey — changing, becoming, acquiring layers of soul and enchantment. And I’m far from alone in having experienced that evolution in a strange kind of reverse order.

To state the obvious: A great many people got to know “Hallelujah” from “Shrek,” the 2001 DreamWorks animated fairy tale where it was used to lend a surprisingly wistful and melancholy dimension to the story of a cantankerous green ogre. (In the film, “Hallelujah” expresses the thawing of his heart.) The version of the song heard in “Shrek” is by John Cale, the former member of the Velvet Underground (though the soundtrack version, for synergistic corporate reasons, is by Rufus Wainwright, who directly imitated Cale’s version). A Cale rendition of the song had appeared on his 1992 live solo album “Fragments of a Rainy Season” (one of my favorite records), but even as Cale was performing it in concert to spellbound audiences, it remained, in the larger world, a well-kept secret.

OldFriends4Sale said:

peedub said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Leonard Cohens' version is played during Christmas season/stations etc It cracked me up when I hear the lyrics. Almost sounds like a violent S&M song until you know he is referencing the Torah's David & Bathsheba and Sampson and Deliliah

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Alabama 3 did his song for the Sopranoes series

Leonard Cohen - Woke up t... - YouTube

Ah. I don't listen to the radio or pay much attention to christmas marketing, so that must have slipped by me, but leonard Cohen is not associated with 'woke up this morning' in any sense beyond being mistaken as its writer/performer. [Edited 12/14/21 9:45am]

ok you just wanted to be heard lol

OldFriends4Sale said:

The Meaning and History o... Spinditty

The lyrics also allude to the rush of sexual orgasm. The brilliance of Cohen's poetry and lyrics is that nothing is ever just one thing. These lyrics are open-ended and leave room for multiple interpretations. We can find hints of sexuality in verses such as:

Well there was a time when you let me know

what's really going on below

but now you never show that to me do you

But remember when I moved in you

and the holy dove was moving too

and every breath we drew was hallelujah

"Below" could be in reference to his partner's sexual excitement. But, she seems to have grown cold and holds back her true feelings from him. Perhaps he is saddened because he feels that the relationship has died. He felt deep intimacy and passion when he made love to her, but that well of intimacy has dried up. The sexual interpretation of Cohen's "Hallelujah" hinges on lines such as: