position of the song. Whereas a poet does much the same, they don’t have the musical
bits to contend with for the most part.
Start with a rock-solid idea of what the heck you’re trying to say. Leonard Cohen is a
great example of this attribute. He nails it. By listening to his music, it seems to me that
Cohen has a vividly clear idea of what he wants to say ... and then says it, or rather,
writes it. His style centers on themes. In Cohen's work it involves love, sex, religion, de-
pression, and music itself. He’s a man with a message and one who know how to tell it in
an engaging way.
The first time I heard, Hallelujah, it tore me up. From Wikipedia, “Cohen's lyrical po-
etry and his view that ‘many different hallelujahs exist’ is reflected in wide-ranging cov-
ers with very different intents or tones of speech, allowing the song to be ‘melancholic,
fragile, uplifting [or] joyous’ depending on the performer: The Welsh singer-songwriter
John Cale, the first person to record a cover version of the song in 1991, promoted a mes-
sage of ‘soberness and sincerity’ in contrast to Cohen's dispassionate tone; The cover by
Jeff Buckley, an American singer-songwriter, is more sorrowful and was described by
Buckley as ‘a hallelujah to the orgasm’; Crowe interpreted the song as a "very sexual"
composition that discussed relationships; Wainwright offered a ‘purifying and almost
liturgical’ interpretation to the song; and Guy Garvey of the British band Elbow anthro-
pomorphised the hallelujah as a ‘stately creature’ and incorporated his religious interpre-
tation of the song into his band's recordings.” To me, it’s just a great song that summed
up what I was feeling at the time I first heard it.