Leonard Cohen: "Love Is Not A Victory March"

I have always loved Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

But not sung by him.

I like it sung by Rufus Wainwright, and I love it sung by Jeff Buckley.

The interpretations, though, are held together by the incredible lyric and the composition.

Something Cohen can be relied on for and why he supports covers like the gorgeous and graceful Madeleine Peyroux so successfully.

He grounds music in something so fundamental.

No bull and where its bull, its self-aware.

His lyric works hard to claim for itself a truth.

I feel nostalgia for things I haven't been through, because he talks to a feeling or a thing plainly enough to involve me.

Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen (from Leonard Cohen Live in Concert)

I've heard there was a secret chord
that David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, Do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor Fall, The major lift,
The baffled king composing, hallelujah

Hallelujah (chorus)

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne
she cut your hair and from your lips she drew the halleujah

Hallelujah (chorus)

Maybe I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah (chorus)

There was a time you let me know
What's real and going on below
but now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah (chorus)

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah (chorus)