Read the story behind the late legendary artist's most famous song, excerpted from Alan Light's 2012 book The Holy or the Broken.
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Leonard Cohen's career had reached a low point when he wrote his most memorable song "Hallelujah." It was 1984, and he had been out of the spotlight for quite a long time. His 1977 album, Death of a Ladies' Man, a collaboration with Phil Spector, was a commercial and critical disappointment, and his next album Recent Songs fared no better.
When Cohen submitted the songs for his subsequent album, Various Positions, to Columbia, label execs didn't hear Hallelujah, the opening song of Side Two of the record, as anything special. They didn't even want to release the album, though it eventually came out in Europe in 1984 and America the following year.
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It took a few years for Hallelujah to emerge as a classic. Bob Dylan was one of the first to recognize its brilliance, playing it at a couple of shows in 1988. The Velvet Underground's John Cale tackled it on the piano for a 1991 Cohen tribute disc, and three years later, Jeff Buckley took inspiration from that rendition and covered it on his 1994 album, Grace. It was that version that eventually created a huge cult following around the song, and it's since been covered by everybody from Bono to Bon Jovi.
It's far and away Leonard Cohen's most famous composition, even though many people don't even realize that he wrote it.
Leonard Cohen died at the age of 84 on November 7, 2016. His death was announced on November 11.
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