It’s the song that everyone thinks they know. You’ve heard it at weddings, usually while the bride walks down the aisle. You’ve definitely heard it at funerals. It’s been on American Idol about a thousand times, usually sung by someone with a lot of vocal range and not a lot of life experience. But honestly? The lyrics to song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen are not the holy, saccharine anthem that pop culture has turned them into.
Leonard Cohen wasn't writing a hymn for a Sunday morning service. He was writing about sex, heartbreak, religious doubt, and the absolute exhaustion of being human.
The song took him five years to write. Five years. He reportedly sat in his underwear at the Royalton Hotel in New York, banging his head against the floor because he couldn't get the verses right. He wrote around 80 draft verses. Some were overtly religious, others were incredibly carnal. When he finally released it in 1984 on the album Various Positions, his record label, Columbia, basically told him it was a failure. They didn't even want to release it in the United States. They didn't see the masterpiece. They just saw a weird, synth-heavy track by an aging poet.
The Biblical imagery is a trap
If you look at the opening lines, it feels like a Bible study. You have King David, the "baffled king" composing a chord to please the Lord. But Cohen flips the script immediately. This isn't a song about pure worship; it’s a song about the struggle of faith and the messiness of desire.
Take the reference to Bathsheba and Samson. "You saw her bathing on the roof / Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you." That’s a direct nod to David’s lust for Bathsheba, a moment of moral failure, not spiritual triumph. Then he jumps to Samson: "She tied you to a kitchen chair / She broke your throne, and she cut your hair." He's mixing these massive, ancient archetypes with mundane, almost domestic imagery—a kitchen chair. It's brilliant. It's gritty.
The "Hallelujah" in these lyrics isn't a shout of joy. It’s what Cohen called a "cold and broken" Hallelujah. It’s the sound of someone who has been defeated by love or by God and still finds the breath to say something holy. It’s cynical and sincere at the exact same time.
The chord progression is literally explained in the song
One of the coolest things Cohen did—and something music nerds love to point out—is that he narrates the music theory of the song as it happens.
"It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth / The minor fall, the major lift"
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When he says "the fourth," the song hits a F major chord (in the key of C). When he says "the fifth," it hits G major. "The minor fall" happens on A minor, and "the major lift" lands back on F. He’s showing you his work. He’s pulling back the curtain on the "secret chord" he mentioned in the first verse. It’s a meta-commentary on the act of songwriting itself. He’s telling you that even the music is a struggle to assemble.
Why the lyrics to song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen changed over time
The version most people know isn't actually Cohen's original 1984 version. We have John Cale and Jeff Buckley to thank for the song's second and third lives.
In 1991, for a tribute album called I'm Your Fan, John Cale (of The Velvet Underground) decided to cover it. He asked Cohen to fax him the lyrics. Cohen sent him fifteen pages of verses. Cale looked through them and realized that Cohen’s original version was a bit too "religious." Cale picked out the "cheekier" verses—the ones about the kitchen chair and the eroticism—and rearranged them.
This is a crucial turning point. Cale’s edit shifted the focus from a meditation on the divine to a meditation on human relationships.
Then came Jeff Buckley.
Buckley heard Cale’s version while staying at a friend's apartment and decided to cover it for his 1994 album Grace. Buckley’s version is the one that stripped away the 80s synthesizers and replaced them with that haunting, reverberating Fender Telecaster. He sang it like a prayer to a lover. Because of Buckley, the lyrics to song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen became synonymous with a kind of ethereal, tragic romance.
The Shrek factor
We have to talk about the green ogre. It’s unavoidable. In 2001, Shrek used the song during a montage of sadness. Because of licensing issues, the movie used John Cale’s version, but the soundtrack featured Rufus Wainwright.
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This was the moment the song went viral before "viral" was a thing. Suddenly, kids knew the melody. Parents knew the melody. It became a "sad song" template for every TV show from The West Wing to The O.C. But in this mass-market explosion, the actual meaning of the lyrics got sanded down. People stopped hearing the line about "the holy dove" or the "victory march" and just started hearing a pretty melody.
What does "Hallelujah" actually mean here?
The word itself is Hebrew. Hallelu means "praise ye" and Yah is a shortened form of the name of God. It’s a command to praise.
But Cohen, who was Jewish and later became an ordained Zen Buddhist monk, had a very complicated relationship with praise. He once said in an interview that "Hallelujah" is a word that has been used for thousands of years to affirm our existence. To him, the song was about saying that even when life is falling apart, even when your love life is a wreck, there is still something worth acknowledging in the universe.
It’s an affirmative song, but it’s a tough affirmation. It’s not "everything is great." It’s "everything is difficult, and I’m still here."
Misinterpreted verses
There’s a verse that often gets cut in radio edits or church performances:
"I remember when I moved in you / The holy dove was moving too / And every breath we drew was Hallelujah."
That’s a very physical, very sexual line. Cohen is equating the act of lovemaking with a spiritual experience. For him, there was no line between the sacred and the profane. They were the same thing. When people sing this in a cathedral, they often skip this part, which is a shame. It’s the heart of the song. It’s about finding the "holy" in the "human."
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The legacy of a "broken" anthem
By the time Leonard Cohen passed away in 2016, "Hallelujah" had been covered by over 300 artists. Bon Jovi, Pentatonix, Alexandra Burke, k.d. lang. Each version changes the meaning slightly.
- k.d. lang turned it into a powerhouse vocal showcase that feels like a mountain peak.
- Pentatonix turned it into a polished, Christmas-adjacent choral piece.
- The Canadian Tenors made it operatic.
But if you go back to Cohen’s gravelly, baritone original, it feels much more honest. He doesn't sound like a choirboy. He sounds like a man who has seen a lot of things he wishes he hadn't.
The lyrics to song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen endure because they are ambiguous. They don't give you a straight answer. Is it a song about God? Yes. Is it a song about sex? Yes. Is it a song about the frustration of being a creative person? Absolutely.
Actionable ways to appreciate the song today
If you want to actually understand what Cohen was doing, don't just listen to the most popular version on Spotify. Try these steps to get a deeper sense of the work:
- Listen to the 1984 original first. Pay attention to the "cheesy" 80s production. It creates a weird contrast with the heavy lyrics that is actually quite intentional.
- Read the lyrics as poetry. Forget the melody for a second. Read the words on a page. You’ll notice the internal rhymes (like "it" and "spirit," or "you" and "hallelujah") that make the song feel so structurally sound.
- Watch the 2022 documentary. There is a film called Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song. It goes deep into the archives and shows the actual notebooks where he scribbled those 80 different verses. It’s a masterclass in the "labor" of art.
- Compare the "Live in London" version. In his later years, Cohen’s voice dropped an octave. When he performed "Hallelujah" at Glastonbury or in London in his 70s, the lyrics took on a "grandfatherly" wisdom. It feels less like a complaint and more like a final report on a life well-lived.
The song isn't a funeral dirge and it isn't a wedding march. It’s a "broken" hallelujah. It’s the sound of someone admitting they don't have all the answers but they’re still willing to sing. That’s why, no matter how many times it gets overplayed on talent shows, the core of the song remains indestructible. You can't break something that was written to be broken from the start.
Ultimately, the best way to honor the track is to stop treating it like a piece of background music. It’s a complicated, messy, and deeply human document. Next time you hear it, listen for the "kitchen chair." Listen for the "minor fall." That’s where the real story lives.