Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

Every time I hear this song I’m unsure whether it is joyous and uplifting or melancholic and sorrowful. Maybe that’s because it is all of these things.

Leonard Cohen, the original songwriter for this frequently performed and covered song, said that “It explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist, and all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value.” Hallelujah means in its purest form to praise God, but even without being religious it means to be grateful for life and to live it to the fullest. I think this is an honorable but challenging and maybe even impossible request for us to achieve. How can we be thankful when it feels like we have nothing? How can we sing joyously when there is so much sorrow surrounding us in the world? And how can we act righteously when most of us are unsure what “doing the right thing” even means?

The song mentions the biblical stories of King David and Samson and references their ethics and morals. King David is known in the bible as the perfect king. It all started when he came up from nothing to defeat a Giant and throughout his life he continued to please the Lord with all of his actions. Except one thing. One big thing. He saw Bathsheba “bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew” him. He crafted a plan to have her husband murdered so that he could have her all for himself. Adultery… MURDER… not so perfect anymore, David. But I believe that this songs shows that even God’s most noble champions still have “cold and broken hallelujahs” just like all of us.

All of us are trying to achieve something with our lives, whether that be to come closer to God like the people mentioned in the song, to be kind and do the right things, to have a lasting and positive impact on the world, or just to be happy. And we have also all experienced setbacks and challenges along the path towards achieving our goals. This demand of hallelujah, to continually look upwards and to sing joyous praises, is hard to achieve when the pressures of the world can be so heavy.

Though the tone of this song is melancholy I wanted to capture the joy and happiness one feels when singing praises like hallelujah. I tried to capture images which show life being enjoyed and what better place to be grateful for all we have than in nature! Though we all make mistakes and have challenging situations, and a lot of them, probably hundreds each day, we still deserve to and have the ability to be happy. And what better way to be happy than by singing and playing the ukulele!