{"id":1664,"date":"2016-04-22T18:07:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T06:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2022-03-28T17:49:41","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T04:49:41","slug":"hallelujah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2016\/04\/22\/hallelujah\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallelujah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Leonard Cohen&#8217;s <em>Hallelujah<\/em> is a great song. I often find it running through my head. I love how the lyrics are evocative without being literal, and the way the verses all have the same feel but are pretty much independent. I find myself half-making up new verses all the time. So did Leonard: apparently he wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hallelujah_(Leonard_Cohen_song)#Musical_composition_and_lyrical_interpretation\">80 verses<\/a> for the song, whittling them down to the four in the final version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-spotify wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Hallelujah\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/7yzbimr8WVyAtBX3Eg6UL9?si=f4aed47d66d24f79&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, now I have hit upon a foolproof method for doing it myself, so here I present:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>How to write &#8220;Hallelujah&#8221;<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Think of a word or phrase that rhymes with &#8220;hallelujah&#8221;.<\/li><li>Drink a bottle of red wine while ruminating on your many unhappy love affairs.<\/li><li>Write the verse around your rhyming word.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>No one else has ever guessed<br \/>That I&#8217;m the one who knows you best<br \/>But I know that I don&#8217;t mean that much to ya<br \/>I press my glass against the wall<br \/>And every time I hear you call<br \/>Then I reply with my own hallelujah<br \/><em>Hallelujah, hallelujah<\/em><br \/><em>Hallelujah, hallelujah<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Like Leonard, I&#8217;ve relied here on &#8220;ya&#8221; for the rhyme. He uses &#8220;fool ya&#8221;, &#8220;overthrew ya&#8221;, and actually he also uses &#8220;to ya&#8221; so mine is even less original than I first thought. But there must be more possibilities for rhyming with &#8220;hallelujah&#8221;, so:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>It&#8217;s getting very late at night<br \/>And I don&#8217;t have the appetite<br \/>To eat the grapes you&#8217;re peeling for me, Beulah<br \/>And now with every passing hour<br \/>The fruit so sweet is turning sour<br \/>And now I&#8217;ll never hear the hallelujah<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>You joined a chorus at the church<br \/>And every day I&#8217;d come to watch<br \/>You practising your &#8220;do re mi fa so la&#8221;<br \/>I never told you my desire<br \/>To have you in my private choir<br \/>So you and I could both sing hallelujah<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I&#8217;ve come up with a plan which is<br \/>To make some tasty sandwiches<br \/>With mayonnaise, tomato, corn and tuna<br \/>I&#8217;ll bring a basket to your door<br \/>We&#8217;ll spread a rug upon the floor<br \/>We&#8217;ll both say grace and sing a hallelujah<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe some of these rhymes are a bit outlandish: they don&#8217;t have the gravitas of the original song. They&#8217;re like an inferior <a href=\"http:\/\/www.houseoftomorrow.com\/\">Stephin Merritt<\/a> rhyme (like Dakota\/iota or blue\/Camus or vivisection\/affection). I confess I skipped the bottle of red wine for these ones; that&#8217;s probably why they&#8217;re not morose enough. Maybe they&#8217;d work better if you imagine Leonard&#8217;s voice singing them. No, actually I doubt whether he has ever sung the word &#8220;tuna&#8221; in any of his songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, if you want to try your hand at it, here are some &#8220;hallelujah&#8221; rhymes to start you off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Booyah<\/li><li>Moolah<\/li><li>Aloha<\/li><li>Loofah<\/li><li>Sequoia<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder if Leonard used any of these in his 76 discarded verses.<\/p>\n<!-- wpsso rrssb get buttons: buttons on archive option not enabled -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leonard Cohen&#8217;s Hallelujah is a great song. I often find it running through my head. I love how the lyrics are evocative without being literal, and the way the verses all have the same feel but are pretty much independent. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2016\/04\/22\/hallelujah\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[101,7,43,102],"class_list":["post-1664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-idea","tag-leonard-cohen","tag-music","tag-poetry","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4201,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions\/4201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}