There are times when certain songs and corresponding memories evoke such overwhelming emotions that words cannot adequately describe them.
Hallelujah has that effect on me. This song unleashes a surge of conflicting feelings and multitudinous levels of meaning, which are more easily absorbed than defined. Every breath of Hallelujah assumes its own special identity: love, spirituality, loss, anguish, hope, peace, human failings, emotional fragility, resurgence.
Hallelujah was written by Canadian musician and writer Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) and has been performed a multitude of times by a wide variety of singers/musicians.
My two favorite renditions are by K.D. Lang and Jeff Buckley. I love both versions, so it's difficult to choose one over the other.
I always get teary-eyed when I hear K.D.Lang sing Hallelujah. She interprets it with such genuine heart-wrenching emotion that it blows me away, leaves me breathless.
Jeff Buckley (1966-1997) was an earthy performer with an incredible voice and an impressive vocal range. His rendition of Hallelujah (from the original studio cut) is superb. He sometimes had the voice of an angel and it's tragic that he didn't live long enough to fully develop it.
Buckley drowned at the age of thirty, while swimming in the Wolf River Harbor in Memphis, Tennessee.
Hallelujah inspires me for many deeply personal reasons, too intricate to fully explain. It ignites memories of my private losses and loves, my many tribulations and occasional triumphs.
Here's Buckley's unedited studio cut version.
P.S.
BTW
The two videos on this post aren't mine. I "lifted" them from YouTube.
