A blaze of light in every word

by Doctor Science

Via Slacktivist and Jessica at Friendly Atheist, I've learned that WORLD magazine editor and developer of "compassionate conservatism" Marvin Olasky has re-written the lyrics to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, the better to "take the music captive" for Christianity.

Now, I don't agree with Jessica that "Hallelujah" is The Best Song Ever, but it's certainly one of the best. Importantly, it's one of the best and most popular religious songs written in the past several decades. "Religious" in the way Rufus Wainwright described it: "The music never pummels the words. The melody is almost liturgical and conjures up religious feelings."

The trouble for a Christianist like Olasky is that the complex and poetic lyrics Cohen wrote for "Hallelujah" don't lend themselves to a single, straightforward, doctrinally pure interpretation. That's one reason I think they *work*, but it doesn't make them comfortable in the way he prefers.

I'm cutting here because this somehow turned into 2000 words about "Hallelujah", religion, the Silmarillion, and Stargate: Atlantis.

Here are the first two verses of "Hallelujah", comparing versions:

Cohen lyrics	Olasky lyrics
I 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	I’ve heard there was a secret chord That David played, it pleased the Lord. But You don’t love us for our music, do You? Sin goes like this: The fourth, the fifth, Adam’s fall, the major rift, The baffled king neglecting Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you She tied you to a kitchen chair She broke your throne, and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah	Nathan said, "I see your lust. You violate a soldier’s trust. Your pride, your pomp, at night they overthrew you. You steal, you kill, you get your way, But God has said, your child will pay, And from your lips He’ll draw the Hallelujah."
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

For me, comparing the two versions reminds of nothing so much as The Music of the Ainur, from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.

Ainulindalë - The Music of the Ainur, part of a Silmarillion illustration project by Aaron Diaz. To my mind, this image specifically illustrates this passage:

Now the Children of Ilúvatar are Elves and Men, the Firstborn and the Followers. And amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable stars.

And this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness; as who should take the whole field of Arda for the foundation of a pillar and so raise it until the cone of its summit were more bitter than a needle; or who consider only the immeasurable vastness of the World, which still the Ainur are shaping, and not the minute precision to which they shape all things therein.

The Music of the Ainur, Ainulindalë, was one of the oldest elements in Tolkien's writing, composed decades before The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote a creation story where Eru (=God) conducts the Ainur (=angels) in a musical chorus, before the world was made. Melkor (=Lucifer) rebels, and tries to make his own solos, until

And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.

One reason, I believe, that "Hallelujah" is so popular and feels religious to so many people is because it has that quality of "immeasurable sorrow", instead of a "clamorous unison" proclaiming victory. The latter is a quality Fred says he hears in Awesome God, currently an extremely popular Christian "praise song":

There’s something a bit off-puttingly possessive about the possessive pronoun in the chorus: "Our God is an awesome God" That word "our" has become increasingly common in evangelical praise choruses. It no longer seems enough to sing that "God is an awesome God," or that "God reigns" — we sing that "Our God is an awesome God," and "Our God ray-ay-ay-ayns, Our God reigns."

This is Christianism, Christianity as (or in aid of) a political agenda, flattened out and made pure and simple.

Not even one person is that simple, much less a worldwide religious community. Fred points out that Rich Mullins, the writer of "Awesome God", also wrote Hard to Get, about human limitations and doubts about a God who seems to be "up there just playing hard to get". If Mullins' songs can fit into the "Christian" category, so could these verses of "Hallelujah":

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

[Chorus]

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

-- though they were written by a Buddhist Jew (it's a thing). It seems to me that any religion that has room for Job has room for these feelings, and for words like these.

There are about 6234897 versions of "Hallelujah", but I imprinted on Rufus Wainwright's. That was mostly because of this Stargate: Atlantis fanvid:
 
Direct YouTube Link

by Zoë Rayne and Rache (uploaded to YouTube by me, with their gracious permission). The vid was created for Vividcon in August 2005, when only one season of SG:A had aired; it was one of the agents that drew me into the fandom.

I watched this vid over and over again in the fall of 2005, as I was drifting towards SGA, part of a mass migration away from Smallville fandom at the time. I hadn't started watching the show yet, but I was reading a lot of the fanfiction, some of which was of startlingly high quality.

SGA, which ended up running for five seasons, was never really all that *good*, considered as either TV or science fiction. But "Good enough to be interesting, not good enough to be completely satisfying" is the sweet spot for fanfiction, and SGA really hit it.

Here's how I "read" this vid, and why it affected me so much:

The vid, like the song, has an "I" and a "you". "I" is Rodney McKay, "you" is John Sheppard:

---

This is Dr. Rodney McKay. As you can see, he is (a) Canadian, (b) a scientist, and (c) surrounded by idiots.

---

This is Major John Sheppard, USAF. He has no idea what is going on.

---

Sheppard was the lead in SGA, the military commander/pilot/hero; McKay was the scientist/nerd/smart guy. Or at least that's how TPTB ("The Powers That Be": the showrunners, the people who were in charge of the series) seemed to think of them. Fandom, on the other hand, looked at them and said, "that weird guy from the chess club and my slacker ex-boyfriend are supposed to save the world? WE'RE DOOMED"

During the first season of SGA, the gang (including McKay and Sheppard) go through a wormhole to the Pegasus galaxy to explore the lost city of Atlantis. The expedition finds themselves fighting against an unexpected, horrible enemy, the Wraith (the guys with the long white hair, flying the pointy little spaceships).

Among other things, a fanvid can be an argument, a way of presenting evidence toward a conclusion. Zoë & Rache's vid has an emotional arc, which they are arguing for as the emotional arc for Season 1 of SGA. Or as a way of reading Season 1 that makes it more emotionally coherent than the actual broadcast show turned out to be.

You can trace the arc by just looking at the choruses. Even though they all are just the one word, repeated over and over, it's not just one meaning: hallelujah takes on different resonances each time. It's multifaceted and multivalent -- and I think this is one of the reasons Olasky and his ilk want to re-write Cohen's song. One of the tenets of their stripe of American evangelical fundamentalism is that Scripture is both simple and transparent: anyone can read the Bible, and all correct readings of the Bible give the same message.

The first chorus (at 0:43) begins with Atlantis rising from the ocean, ends with Sheppard killing the Wraith Queen. The hallelujahs celebrate beauty and triumph. Second chorus (1:25): begins with stars turning overhead in a holo-display, ends with the puddlejumper (Sheppard's ship) bombing the Wraith. This is beauty and triumph again, but more ambiguous: we've achieved victory, but it was very destructive. Third chorus (2:09): begins with Wraith coming through the Stargate in a perfect melding of beauty and terror, ends with them being blown up -- and McKay's face, as he learns that more are coming. The hallelujahs seem ironic, the minor key more important than the celebration. Fourth chorus(2:52): Wraith fleet arriving, McKay watching them destroy the space station that was supposed to defend Atlantis (killing one of his good friends, as well). Hallelujah here is a cry out of sorrow and despair: it is the enemy that's triumphing, not our heroes.

The final chorus (3:35) is actual a double: the first repetition begins with the approach of the Wraith fleet to battle Atlantis, and ends with Sheppard's puddlejumper rising through its gate. The second rep is just cutting back and forth between McKay and Sheppard, as Sheppard heads out on a suicide mission: to detonate the bomb McKay built -- which was how Season 1 ended.

Now, this might seem like a completely despairing conclusion, with hallelujah being totally ironic and bitter. Except (a) since this is TV, we always knew Sheppard was protected by Plot Armor, so the question wasn't whether he was going to survive, but *how*. But more important for the feel of the vid, I think, is that it was established early in Season 1 that Sheppard is a huge fan of Doug Flutie's great "Hail Mary" pass[1]. Having the second rep of the final chorus be almost action-free, just showing their faces while hearing hallelujah, hallelujah, makes me recognize Sheppard's mission as a Hail Mary (I don't know if that was Zoë & Rache's intention, or if the SGA writers themselves thought of it that way), and thus makes the hallelujahs more of a directed prayer, a hope for succor in desperate need. It asks for rescue, yes, but also, as the Hail Mary prayer says, for solace "now and in the hour of our death".

How could I resist the fandom, when this vid promised me joy and beauty and awe and terror and grief and hope, all together? Even knowing that, as Tolkien says of The Silmarillion,

If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred

-- that is, that stories (and, even more frequently, TV shows) that begin well often end poorly, due to the weakness of human nature, injudicious apple-eating and other original sins, Sturgeon's Law, and other consequences of entropy.

Stargate Springtime, by mercscilla. I am currently using this as my computer wallpaper

---

[1] This was originally intended to be my Super Bowl Sunday post, but I kind of failed. Long-windedly.

Comments

[CaseyL]

Hallelujah is one of my favorite songs ever.

I came to it in an unexpected way. A friend sent me a YouTube vid of some people in Italy giving out "Free Hugs." The piece was edited to show that passerby were at first amused and suspicious, then slowly started hugging and being hugged back, and then everybody hugging everybody else.

What lifted the vid from "hey, pretty nice" to something that made me cry watching it was the soundtrack. After some digging, I found out the song was "Hallelujah," sung by Alexandra Burke. I got a bit obsessed, did searches for and listened to so many, many covers of the song. Then sang it myself, frequently (when alone at home, so no one but the cats heard my wavery quavery rendition).

One of West Wing's most heart-wrenching scenes - the one where the Secret Service agent CJ has been crushing on is killed, just before they were supposed to go on a date - played "Hallelujah" as CJ sits on a bench and slowly breaks down into tears.

It pains me to think of Christianists taking this wonderful, powerful song and bowlderizing it to suit their priggish fancy. Doesn't Leonard Cohen still own the rights? Don't they have to get his approval - not for rewriting it, but for publishing and performing it?

[Thoreau]

A blog post about one of my favorite songs and one of my favorite books!

I do like Rufus Wainwright's version, but I prefer Kate Voegele's rendition. I would say that her version is very similar to Wainwright's, but I really like female vocalists.

As to Melkor, one thing he has in common with the Christian Right is that he came from a place of wanting his Father's favor. Melkor didn't hate Iluvatar, he just wanted to be the favorite, and he was ashamed when his Father didn't like his improvisation. Likewise, the Christian Right loves God as they understand Him. There's a lot that they miss (e.g. "Do not pray in public as the hypocrites do" and "Whatsoever you do to the least of My people that you do unto Me") but they are (mostly) sincere. Their adoration for the Terminator Jesus at the end of Left Behind shows a sincere confusion over why the Father hasn't smote the rest of the world. They really think that they're the only ones serving the Father.

[dr ngo]

Leonard Cohen sings it himself. Best.

[bob_is_boring]

Now, I don't agree with Jessica that "Hallelujah" is The Best Song Ever, but it's certainly one of the best.

/head explodes

Axiology is fickle, but goodness gracious.

[Slartibartfast]

They really think that they're the only ones serving the Father.

This is one of the reasons why I have distaste for those professing their faith is the One True Christianity. Religion is, for me, a very personal thing.

I don't think God wants us all to behave as prophets until he chooses us for that, and that's just not the nature of it, at present and at any recorded time in history.

Serve. Maybe at some point you will be called on to point out people's sin for them, but for now: serve.

OPMMV

[Harald K]

There was some brouhaha in Norway recently over this, but in the other direction.

"Tenn lys!" ("Light candles!") is an advent candle-lighting song written for a Children's TV show in the eighties. It has three fairly secular verses about compassion and love and fighting for justice and such, and the final verse is explicitly Christian. It's become very popular.

Some people in the Heathen's society (a more militantly anti-Christian offshoot of the Humanist association) took offense and published a "censored" lyric in a songbook for their members. A parish board member in Oslo responded by writing a Christianised version of "Til Ungdommen", ("To the young"), a rousing idealistic humanist song by the late communist Nordahl Grieg. Both are taken down now.

In general this is nothing new. Lots and lots of psalms are "liberated" drinking songs, and I have a couple of old Teetotaller songbooks with new lyrics for drinking songs - the authors explicitly wanted to preserve positive aspects of a culture they wanted to abolish. Union songs and Worker's songs were often "stolen" the other way.

With the possible exception of copyright and respect for the artist, there's no reason to go hating for stuff like this. Leonard Cohen the Buddhist Jew is alive and well, if he took offense at this he could have stopped it. That he hasn't I see as evidence he's a sensible person after all.

[Countme-In]

Wise words, Slart.

Walker Percy wrote something along those lines (I can't find the quote at the moment; there are several -- in his non-fiction, and placed in the mouths of his fictional characters as well), pointing out self-effacingly that it wasn't for him to be a prophet, despite the prophetic tone ascribed to his work by his readers.

Finding out Olasky is rewriting Cohen is like finding out the Swedes in Ikea's Swedish meatballs have been replaced with horse meat.

Horse meat is all very fine in its place, but I find ground Swede to be easier on the digestion.

Olasky .... Olasky, wasn't he one of them Ivy League Commie Marxists (Yale) a long time ago that the One True Ted Cruz Harvard grad was yammering on about?

Marxist, not in the Groucho or Harpo sense, but more Chico, grifting the marks with one hand while the other hand fumbles with the chorus girl's bodice?

[Countme-In]

Harold K.: Very interesting comment.

Jose Canseco rewrote the theory of gravity recently, too.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-jose-canseco-explains-gravity-20130219,0,2427129.story

His point being that if gravity's force was less, as it was in prehistoric times, according to his calculations, that fly ball wouldn't have plonked him as hard in the noggin in the famous vid.

I'm not sure about his views regarding how less gravity would have affected Mark McGuire's home run totals, but he may come up with a unified theory one day.

There's an audio outtake from a 1964-65 recording session of Paul McCartney singing "Scrambled Eggs", with fully fleshed-out lyrics describing a range of breakfast comestibles ("Scrambled eggs, oh how I really loved your legs"), before he decided to bowdlerize the song into "Yesterday".

[russell]

if olasky wants 'better' songs, for whatever definition of 'better' floats his boat, he should write his own and leave leonard cohen the hell out of it.

leaving aside the religious aspect of it, his (olasky's) work, like virtually all agitprop literature and art, is crap.

i wonder if he asked cohen's permission to parody his work? it's not legally necessary, but it is considered good form.

leaving the religious aspect in, what slarti said.

[wj]

russell, do you really think Olasky would use the term "parody" for what he did?

My suspicion is that he thinks he was merely making some improving tweaks. Editing, if you will -- as every editor feels he is making little changes, which make a work better without changing it materially.

[Countme-In]

Didn't Olasky write the words to George W. Bush's theme song -- "Compassionate Conservatism"?

One of Ayn Rand's party tricks back in the Greenspan/Brandon days was to down a beer in one gulp and then belch out the lyrics to the original version of the song, which rhymed f*ck off with jagoff in the chorus.

As I recall, the second verse went something along the lines of "A pretty young lass once aristotled, that the poor are better throttled than coddled."

You don't get the joke without the belching.

Bush's and Olasky's contributions to the later version amounted to emphasizing the downbeat for improved danceability and the release of a music video of Bush practicing his compassionate smirking.

[russell]

russell, do you really think Olasky would use the term "parody" for what he did?

probably not initially, he appears to believe he's single-handedly redeeming the popular culture for the kingdom of god.

if he hears from cohen's lawyers regarding copyright infringement, however, 'parody' will begin to seem like a really good way to characterize it.

dude should write his own songs and leave off bollixing up other people's.

or, better yet, not write songs at all.

[hairshirthedonist]

So that song wasn't written just for Shrek? Interesting...

[Carleton Wu]

Axiology is fickle, but goodness gracious.

Hear hear; I can apparently stand to live in a world where some people like Leonard Cohen, but wondering aloud whether this stuff is the best evar or just close to it is a bridge too far people.

[cleek]

Maybe at some point you will be called on to point out people's sin for them

two men say they're Jesus. one of them must be wrong.

since supernatural entities do not use cryptographically-strong signature verification protocols, nor even the services of notaries public, there's no way to say who has been 'called' and who hasn't. if you say you have, who can dispute it? how could i prove you wrong? if i say i can, i'm asserting my knowledge of supernatural entity X is greater than yours. but that's unprovable, also.

religion: baffling logic for millennia.

[Donald Johnson]

"Didn't Olasky write the words to George W. Bush's theme song -- "Compassionate Conservatism"?"

I think I first heard that phrase in 1999 or thereabouts, before I knew anything about Shrub and I liked the sound of it. I wouldn't have voted for him or the concept, but I liked the idea of people arguing about the best ways to help the poor and really being sincere about it. That's what politics should be about.

Chris Hayes mentioned on one of his shows recently how liberals tend to idealize conservatives who are no longer in power--we (or some of us) say things like "Reagan was much more pragmatic" and now we've even got people looking back at Bush II with nostalgia--he wasn't anti-immigrant, he discouraged Islamophobia , and now I'm talking about how I liked the sound of compassionate conservatism.

Well, I still think Bush is a war criminal and should be living his life out in prison, but rhetorically at least I preferred his "compassionate conservatism" to this new meme of the 47 percent, where the Republicans don't even pretend to have anything other than contempt for the poor. It does show a downward trend.

As for compassionate conservatism in practice, it didn't amount to much, except maybe for that massive spending increase for fighting AIDS in Africa (or so I've heard--I didn't follow the issue closely.)

[Hartmut]

wj, 'parody' as a scholarly term (outside its original context of Greek theatre) means just the retexting of a tune. Bach did a lot of it (best known example: he reused the music of a princely birthday celebration piece and made it the the basis for the opening chorus for the Christmas Oratorio). At his time it was only allowed of course to reuse a 'secular' work for a 'sacred' purpose, not the other way around.
The concept that parody means a mocking is a new one.

I have chtulhufied quite a number of sacred songs personally.

[wj]

Hartmut, I am familiar of a lot of re-use of songs. Especially in what we call filk songs. In fact, I've written new lyrics myself for a number of them. But the idea was to recycle the tune for a generally unrelated subject.

But the only way "parody" is used today (at least in the US) is as something that would be close to the original, but tweaked so as to make a mockery of it. That is what my comment took as the meaning, and what I would have expected Olansky would have read in the word.

[russell]

In US copyright law, parodies of copyrighted songs are permissible under fair use.

If Olansky decides to pursue his new hobby and characterizes what he is doing as a parody of the original, he's all set.

Otherwise, he will need to cut Mr. Cohen a check.

He can be the 2 Live Crew of the evangelical community. It's a niche, I'm not sure anyone else is working that territory, so there may be some opportunities there for him.

[Hartmut]

It's another one of these cases where scholarly and popular meaning of a term have almost completely separated. In popular use it can be applied far more widely (not just to songs and even to music without text) but in a much narrower sense (restricted to humorous use).
----
Idol, cultists are adoring
OT: Jesu, joy of man's desiring (after BWV 147)
T: Original German: Martin Janus(1661), English: Robert S. Bridges (assumed)
M: Johann Schop, arranged by Johann Sebastian Bach(1723)

Idol, cultists are adoring
Pedestal of stone so green
Likeness of the soul devouring
Tentacled and scaly Thing
Spawn of Stars of flesh not mortal
Step now through the opened portal
Take Thy seat in Your old town
Deep Ones shambling round Thy throne

Through the ages we were hiding
Had to shun the light of day
But the cult in Thee confiding
Did in secret victims slay
In destruction we('ll) take pleasure
Your's is madness without measure
After sleeping for aeons
Come again into your own

[hairshirthedonist]

me so holy

[Hartmut]

So, who holed you?

[hairshirthedonist]

Hartmut, sneaking that comment in between mine and russell's totally ruins the comic timing.

[Hartmut]

I have to partially correct myself. It seems that the term 'parody' developed its different meanings independently in and outside of the musical realm. Outside music it carried the 'mocking' aspect from the start (in acient Greece) while in the musical context the humorous connotation only entered the frame in the late 18th/early 19th century and did not supplant the neutral meaning before the 20th.

[Laura Koerbeer]

I'm very partial to kdlang's version.

I hate it that a relious nut is trying to hijack the song for his own propaganda. Ugh.

I don't like atheists taking the religion out of a song, either.

It's not fair to the artist who composed the poetry to have someone come along and rewrite their poem to have a different message They should write their own damn poem if they have something they want to say!

[Hartmut]

I have nothing to say, I do poetry and parody just for the evulz ;-)

---

Squids wha hae
OT: Scots wha hae

Squids wha hae till now been mute
Just been whale and human food
Don the kilt grab pipes and flute
Sing our battle song
Now's the day and now's the hour
We'll no longer hide and cower
No one hence shall us devour
Do us any wrong

Octopus and cuttlefish
Will no longer serve as dish
And for those who still so wish
Of our wrath beware
Let's together proudly hail
Never will our struggle fail
Calmar union shall prevail
Firmly we declare

We all share a common fate
Tentacles be ten or eight
Never counted they who ate
Us with sauce or fried
Pibroch sound through sea and reef
Man, you better do believe
Do us harm, you'll come to grief
By our rules abide

Vampire squids from hell now creep
Architeuthis in the deep
Wake the Kraken from his sleep
Squidkind will not yield
Rise now for the time is ripe
Tartan squids of any stripe
Lead our host the foe to wipe
Off the battlefield

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Harald K: "Lots and lots of psalms are "liberated" drinking songs"

A truly despicable act that should be denounced by all alcoholics, coherently or not. Thor should smite their teetotaller asses.

[wj]

Hartmut,
And another variation (also to the tune of Men of Harlech):

What's the use of wearing braces?
Hats or spats or shoes with laces?
Vest or pants you buy in places
Down in Brompton Road?

What's the use of shirts of cotton?
Studs that always get forgotten?
These affairs are simply rotten --
Better far is woad!

Woad's the stuff to show men.
Woad to scare your foemen.
Boil it to a brilliant blue,
And rub it on your legs and your abdomen.
Ancient Britons never hit on
Anything as good as woad to fit on
Neck or knees or where you sit on.
Tailors be ye blowed.

Romans came across the channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel.
Half a pint of woad per man'll
Clothe us more than these.

Saxons you can save your stitches,
Building beds for bugs in britches,
We have woad to clothe us which is
Not a nest for fleas.

Romans keep your armor;
Saxons your pyjamas.
Hairy coats were made for goats,
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas.
March on Snowdon, with your woad on,
Never mind if you get rained or snowed on.
Never need a button sewed on.
Bottom's up to woad!

[Hartmut]

My version of that song is:

Cultist Men
Tune: Men of Harlech

Hail, oh Great Old One Cthulhu
Hear the cultists call out to you
Tell us what perversions to do
For your swift return
Stranger take it as a warning
Here we are the rites performing
Drums we/are beat from eve to/till morning/straight on till morning
Bright the fires burn
Hear he victims crying
Soon they will be dying
See us in our loathsome dance all earthly law defying
Hail Cthulhu, Lord of R'lyeh
Come in haste and without delay
Here to taste some/feast on human filet
Brought by cultist men

May the cultists rant and rave
While Cthulhu's in his grave
Mankind seems completely safe
But that will not last
Soon will come the great transition
When fulfilled is the condition
Stars are in the right position
Like in distant past
Sea and earth are shaking/quaking
Cthulhu is awaking
Cyclopean buildings through the ocean's surface are breaking
For the Lord of devastation
Filled with anxious expectation
Waits a special delegation
Of us cultist men

Woe, ye cultists, thou art fools
Don't you know you are just tools
Where one of the Old Ones rules
Humans have no place
All your hopes will be in vain
Feel but agony and pain
When you're mercilessly slain
By the elder race
Wake up from your dreaming
Now will start the screaming
From earth's face each tiny trace of human race they'll be cleaning
Like your victims you will howl
When the shoggoths vile and foul
Start to rip and disembowel
You the cultist men

[Jim McC]

I always took Cohen's song as an observation of the many wonderful and dreadful things we really mean on the many different occasions we utter the words "I love you" (for which "Hallelujah" is a placeholder).

[doretta]

Gotta put in a plug for my favorite performance of this song: kd lang, the live version. Incredibly powerful.

[novakant]

Nice article about the song here.

I gotta say, to me Buckley's version represents something so otherworldly that all the other renditions seem slightly banal.

[johnw]

I must say, I had never imagined that "Hallelujah" would be the perfect song to accompany a vid about fighting the evil spawn of Johnny Winter, but it does seem to work.

But, c'mon, guys, the best cover is John Cale's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzu4LE667VM

[Marty]

I thought this version proved how universally cool the song is:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmpp56_hallelujah-hallelujah_music#.UTpPH-co7IU

[Countme-In]

This version via Sullivan:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/03/09/mental-health-break-105/

[Marty]

Not great, but awesome anyway