Great anthems are not always the best songs but they play the important role of channelling communal emotions
Many films have used songs as titles, but the release of a documentary dedicated to a single one – Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – is a rarity, raising the question of why some music takes on a life of its own. Part of the reason, in this age of endless recycling, is the number of times a track is covered, or sampled, by later artists. In a recent chart, Hallelujah took 48th place, with 112 recorded covers, from Bob Dylan to Bono. When the actor Rita Tushingham chose it as one of her castaway tracks on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, it wasn’t Cohen’s 1984 original that she nominated but Jeff Buckley’s version, released in 1994 – itself inspired by John Cale’s reinterpretation. Other fans will recognise the latter from the movie Shrek. At this point in its afterlife it’s quite possible to know the song without having any idea who wrote it.
Hallelujah is an anthem – a musical form that originated as a call-and-response type of liturgical music, and became a vehicle for the inspiration of congregations. Part of its power lies in its sense of reverence – of worship – even though the object of that worship is not a god at all but its own mischievous creativity in the face of the human condition.
