I’d been avoiding doing the single most overplayed, over-covered, over-exposed Sunday song of the past 30-odd years, simply because it is so obvious. (Certainly its appearance on the Shrek soundtrack, Penatonix albums, countless American Idol entries, and every single natural disaster relief fund-raising video of the past decade, hasn’t helped things.) But then, as I’m fond of telling my students, half of all good writing is simply stating the obvious, because what’s obvious to them isn’t obvious to everyone else; and if I’m going to defend including the Beatles’ “Let It Be” on the basis that “sometimes clichés are all we have,” then it is only fair that I extend the same courtesy to “Hallelujah”–especially on this Valentines Day weekend, when heartache is as omnipresent as romance.

Hence, it feels all the more apropos to discuss the biggest heartbreak anthem of the past generation–which is an especially big matter in a faith such as ours, wherein romance is not only a source of earthly happiness but of eternal marriage and celestial exaltation (suddenly the song’s focus on the fall of King David feels even more relevant, but more on him in a moment).

After all, sometimes a song is overplayed because it really is that good.^[1]It’s like how the first time you hear “Hotel California” as a teenager, it’s the most mesmerizing song you’ve ever heard…but by the 500th rendition, you kinda … Continue reading Not that you’d necessarily know that from the 1984 Leonard Cohen original–I mean, just listen to it:

Listen, I actually love Leonard Cohen–before his voice dropped, anyways. Tracks like “Suzanne” and “Last Year’s Man” are some of my all-time favorites, Sunday morning or otherwise. I especially love how Cohen—the rare late-bloomer who didn’t start recording till his 30s—wrote songs of heartache not for teenagers but full-grown adults, for whom heartbreak doesn’t just feel like it lasts for years, but actually does.

And certainly no one but a Jewish singer-songwriter like Cohen could’ve recognized how the story of King David and Bathsheba makes a perfect metaphor for heartbreak and loss. But good Lord, the cheesy synthesizers, monotone spoken-word delivery, and maudlin gospel choir do the song absolutely no favors. Everything he wrote after his voice dropped at 40–with rare exception–suffered greatly in my opinion, and “Hallelujah” was just one example among many.

Overall, Cohen was an amazing song-writer but a frustratingly inconsistent recording artist. No surprise, then, that it would take another iconoclastic song-writer to recognize this diamond-in-the-rough–which we got with John Cale’s 1991 version:

As co-founder of the legendary Ur-alternative group The Velvet Underground–whose song “Sunday Morning” opened both their first album and this entire series–John Cale was perhaps more attuned to the possibilities of “Hallelujah” than anyone. ^[2]Certainly Cohen seemed to see in Cale a kindred spirit; according to legend, when Cale first faxed Cohen for permission to cover the song (it was 1990, after all) he went out for lunch, then came … Continue reading On his version, one can for the first time make out an actual melody–as well as how well the song can, with only minimal accompaniment, stand on its without any cheesy studio tinkering. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the John Cale version is the one most people are actually covering when they cover “Hallelujah.”

Less often noted, however, is the fact that Cale is not using “Hallelujah” as a vocal showcase, no: he keeps things in a very mid-range, easy-to-sing-along register. He never intended it for trained vocalists to show-off their pipes in singing contests^[3]like every pre-game singer that has ever butchered “The Star-Spangled Banner”, but for the common person to express their own personal heartache and longing. That is, he wanted the focus to be on the song, not the singer–something that the literal hundreds of other cover-versions have often missed.

No, the dubious honor of transforming “Hallelujah” into a vocal showcase belongs (and it pains me to say it, cause this is by far my favorite version) to Jeff Buckley, who covered it on his 1994 debut album Grace.

You never forget your first time, and my first encounter with “Hallelujah” was the Jeff Buckley version. Before a thousand different covers of varying quality blunted its emotional impact, Buckley’s “Hallelujah” is what first transported me. When I was an intern in Mexico my senior year of college, wandering the streets of Guadalajara and wondering what the heck I was even doing with my life–should I apply to grad school, should I propose to my girlfriend–it was Grace specifically and “Hallelujah” in particular that I played on my iPod^[4]just to date myself a bit.

And then when I got home and learned my ex-girlfriend had gotten engaged and I had no one to blame for it but my own dilly-dallying, I especially listened to Buckley’s “Hallelujah” on repeat. It was a Sunday morning song before I even had a Sunday morning playlist. “Hallelujah” would never resonate that much for me again.

Nevertheless, as protective as I am of this version, it’s definitely the one that all the singing show contestants have been trying–and failing–to one-up ever since.

Yet it’s not just Buckley’s untimely drowning death at 27 that renders this version so untouchable in my opinion; it’s the fact that, for all of his impressive vocal acrobatics, Buckley still understood the song the same way John Cale did–as an expression of longing and heartache, not a show-off piece. His voice was still in the service of the song, not the other way around.

Now for the lyrics themselves: as noted earlier, they take on even greater pathos from an LDS perspective. While everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, agrees that what David did to Bathsheba and Uriah was wrong, Mormon doctrine goes even further than most by condemning his sin as irredeemably damnable. (He is still a national hero in Israel today, so be careful about saying that out loud if you ever visit.) Our own D&C 132:39 states that David “hath fallen from his exaltation” due to his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah (which in turn is consistent with D&C 42:18: “he that kills shall not have forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come”). Hence, when the lyrics state that “Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her,” that “She broke your throne, and she cut your hair”^[5]an apparent double-allusion to Samson and Delilah, a Latter-day Saint would understand the full, devastating extent to which David really was overthrown, and his Celestial throne broken, by his doomed love affair. This loss of exaltation is why the Psalmist’s song of praise has become “a cold and a broken Hallelujah.”

Of course, most folks who sing or listen to “Hallelujah” are not contemplating King David’s utter fall from grace; they are, at most, giving expression to some personal heartache. Nevertheless, when you’ve screwed up a relationship like I once did^[6]I’m happily married now, by the way–especially in a religion like ours that places such an oppressively heavy emphasis on getting married as essential for “obtain[ing] the highest“^[7]D&C 131:2 level of the Celestial kingdom–then losing out at love really can feel like a type of damnation, even a permanent loss of exaltation as well. (For reals though, we need to alleviate the massive pressure we place on our YSAs to get married, it is counter-productive and insane.)

In this regard, of all the secular Sunday songs we’ve examined so far, “Hallelujah” may be the most inadvertently Mormon one of all. (Maybe that’s why I’ve been avoiding it for so long).

Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way.