Tag: Leonard Cohen

Tune Tuesday

My home state has produced some of the most amazing artists and music of the past 75 years. As a Michigander (Michiganian?), I consider Bob Seger to be Rock and Roll Royalty. In all the years I listened to his music and played his music on the radio, I had never seen him in concert.

A few years back, when he did his farewell tour, a radio pal asked if I wanted to go see his show in Saginaw. I jumped at the chance and was NOT disappointed. Despite his age, he still sounded amazing. It was a show I will never forget.

A song I have not featured by Bob is a great one called Beautiful Loser. It was the title track to his 1975 album.

Bob says, “A lot of people think I wrote ‘Beautiful Loser’ about myself. I got the idea for that song from a book of Leonard Cohen poetry by the same name. The song was about underachievers in general. I very rarely write about myself that much. I draw on my own experiences like anyone else, but I’m not what you’d call auteuristic. I’m not like my songs at all. I’m a lot more up person than what I write.”

Songfacts says: Seger took almost a year to write this. He played around with many different arrangements of the song until he got it right. In a 1994 interview with Music Connection, he explained:

“I’ve never written the lyrics and tried to build the music around that. It’s usually a feel or a verse or a chorus, and the lyrics will come after I’ve decided that a certain pattern or groove or rhythm is cool. Then I’ll start singing gibberish over that and just find a lyrical idea that fits the ideas that I started out with.

Other times I’ll just sit down and say, ‘I wanna write a song called this.’ That’s how ‘Beautiful Loser’ happened. I just loved the title, which I got from a book of poetry from Leonard Cohen called Beautiful Losers, with an ‘s,’ and I thought it was a really cool title. Actually, I wrote three or four songs called ‘Beautiful Loser’ until I came up with the one that worked. But that’s a pretty rare thing.”

Happy 80th birthday to a Michigan Legend – Bob Seger!

Movie Music Monday – Shrek

The Shrek movies were such a big part of my older boy’s childhood.  They loved them, and I did, too.  I am not ashamed to admit that I am a tad bit excited that they just announced a 5th installment to the series.  I can relate a bit to this ogre!

They’ve always seemed to work some classic tunes into the series.  Bad Reputation, Funkytown, On Top of the World, I’m On My Way, The Immigrant Song, Holding Out For a Hero, and so many others fit perfectly into the scenes of this fairy tale.

It was a Leonard Cohen song that struck a chord with me from the first movie – Hallelujah.  It was released on his Various Positions album and had little success.  However, when John Cale’s 1991 version appeared in the 2001 Shrek film it gained a whole new life.

I’m sure there are more now, but in 2008, someone estimated that there were at least 300-350 versions of the song that had been recorded.  Randy from Mostly Music Covers may have a more accurate and current number.

According to Cohen, he estimated that he had 80-180 versions of the song that he wrote, mainly because of the various renderings of the same line. After his death, his notebooks showed at least 150 versions.

Cohen was asked the meaning of the song many times and gave plenty of answers.  One of them was: “This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.’”

Another time he stated, “there is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones. When one looks at the world, there’s only one thing to say, and it’s hallelujah”. k.d. Lang, who also recorded the song said in an interview shortly after Cohen’s death that she considered the song to be about “the struggle between having human desire and searching for spiritual wisdom. It’s being caught between those two places.“

Rufus Wainwright, who turns 51 today, recorded his version with an arrangement that was almost identical to John Cale’s version.  Wainwright’s version was the one that appeared on the Official Shrek Soundtrack, despite the fact that Cale’s version appears in the movie. The soundtrack went on to go 2 times platinum!

Happy birthday, Rufus Wainwright!