It's a forced rhyme. I'm sure everyone comes down on one side or another, depending on their accent and your ears, at one time or another. I wouldn't read much into it.

"To you" (what he means) and "to ya" (what he sings) don't rhyme even in Cohen's native dialect, so it's not like anyone's being inauthentic. He's just as phony as anyone else.

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And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis

I suppose it's more of the latter. However, every now and then, some friend or other has pointed something out to me along the lines of, "No, honestly, you'll really like this. This is why Jeff Buckley was so brilliant." And I find that I have to listen to yet another saccharine, over sentimentalised ... thing.

I'll go listen to your link ... [sigh]

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"Only connect!"

I know what it is. I just think it fails in this song, and should be abandoned on principle so long as the realer rhyme is already to be had. Not to advocate inflexibility about it, necessarily, but in general it really doesn't work for me. Besides, "yuh" drives home an intimate familiarity the other doesn't. So for me, it's canonic to the song. Let others do as they may.


And he'd probably be the first to say as much. But genuine people actually do walk this Earth, you know. Just because one is flawed, it doesn't mean kindliness or humility makes one a fake.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I'm with Ben, I'm afraid. I don't get Buckley, either.

Mind you, Bob Dylan's mother once confessed - at the height of his fame - that she didn't get it, either. She couldn't see what anyone saw in Bob's music.

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And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cod
British informal
Not authentic; fake.
'a cod Mittel-European accent'

I nearly said 'phoney phonetics', but cod works this side of the pond!

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And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Why I teach... and where
Master of nine?

Interesting. I've never particularly thought of Bob Dylan's stuff as "music". Or not just music, at any rate. I've always thought of it as being poetry. Set to music, but still, primarily poetry.

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"Only connect!"

Just to be clear, my reference to cod/phoney phonetics was about how I was notating things ('ya', 'yuh', 'yah' etc.), not what Cohen or anyone else sang.

_________________
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Why I teach... and where
Master of nine?

It's lyrics. They're different genres. With few exceptions, lyrics sound way more impressive sung than said or (especially) read cold off a page. Real poetry doesn't need melody. All the music is in the words. Melody gets in the way.

This is my chief objection to BD's Nobel prize.

~~

There are a few lyrics in the canon of english lit that are fine enough to get taught as poetry - Summer is a-Coming In and Oh Westryn Winde, for example. But those are a tiny fraction of the body of english lyrics. In the long run, Dylan's not going to make the cut. Some of Cohen might.

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And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis

I'd say Cohen already has. He started out a poet, who set his poems to music.

There are other songs that followed a similar path. Jerusalem, and In the Bleak Midwinter, come to mind.

Well, that wouldn't be me.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Yes. Except...

... read from the page, so without the constraint of Cohen’s pronunciation of hallelujah, it may not even be forced. 'Hallelu-yuh' - 'to yuh' or, in some places, 'Hallelu-yer' - 'to yer' are unremarkable, especially if the rhyme is anticipated.

If sung then there is so much content between the two that I don’t think I would have paid attention to Cohen’s ‘you’ in the live version that Ben mentioned.

Question - are forced rhymes normally the other way round, with the compromise in the second line?

Poets are advised if a weak rhyme is necessary to disguise the fact by recasting the lines so that the weaker element comes first, if possible.

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And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis

Which may be successful for me as a reader - I normally notice them in doggerel when used for effect.

Assonance ('getting the rhyme wrong')!

_________________
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Why I teach... and where
Master of nine?