s1m0n wrote:
Hallelujah (A song that before he died he conceded is "a good song, but over-recorded').
I have a hard time with "conceded". "Opined" I might accept. It's entirely possible, you know, that Cohen was simply being graciously humble in the face of the song's belated (and to Cohen, no doubt unexpected) success. But then I didn't know the man personally.
It's easy for me to imagine that it must have perplexed him that it took someone else to popularize a song that he poured such blood, sweat, and years into.
Peter Duggan wrote:
Nothing very 'secret' about that [Major third], though! It's just E leading to Am, which is the bog-standard way of modulating to the relative minor. It's nice, and adds some colour (hence why extra-scale notes like the G# in that E chord are called 'chromatic'), but not secret... unless he's maybe crediting David with its discovery thousands of years before it became commonplace (but still nice)?
I wouldn't go so far. I think the Major third is just a good device that stands all on its own. Maybe Cohen used it as a metaphor for the lyric, and it was good enough to leave for the rest of the song as well. Or maybe Cohen even simply back-forged that verse to fit an image to the progression as it already existed! For me, the "secret chord" is in the end just a story; it remains a secret ever more, and I prefer it that way.
Thanks to this thread, I've had a Hallelujah earworm the last few days. Hear it enough, and what was matchlessly sublime becomes suddenly dirt-common and unremarkable. I think what elevates the song is arrangement and delivery. You can have your angelic choruses, but for me simple is best: One human quietly wrestling all alone with the messy human condition, in the end to find nothing more for it but to brokenly sing "hallelujah", one-on-one, to the Holy of Holies that he sees confronting him so long as he lives. Since by his very name Cohen was of the priestly class (and keenly aware of it), this is entirely apt. Of course there are other layers and interpretations, too, and that's the genius of it. At this point I still don't have a favorite version, but a few come close.