Oh, Hydriot! You can confess to weeping openly, it's OK ... moist eyes is the same thing anyway. (Isn't it strange, to live in a culture where weeping at beauty - or even howling at it like a dog in heat - is to be avoided by grown men ?) Anyway, you're definitely not a rigid pompous wallflower now....

MERRY CHRISTMAS/HAPPY HANNUKAH/JOYOUS ANY TYPE OF FESTIVITIES to all Cohenites and all future Cohenites (ie people who haven't heard him yet) (that covers everyone in the world, right...?). Going offline for a while - will miss you all! But as Ken has pointed out elsewhere, Leonard Cohen is For Life...

Hear hear, John E. Howard Jacobson is a pompous idiot who really outdid himself in this piece, full of self-important narcissistic irrelevance. As you say, he doesn't even LIKE Leonard Cohen. He seems to think of himself as the only person who's picked up on the beauty of the line 'that's how the li...

Ken Kermit was wonderful. Thank you. You've probably got me down as a sentimentalist/over-wordy/unworthy kind of Cohenite as you never answer my posts, and that's fine. But I must say I'm still curious about exactly what it is that makes people want to keep their favourite music to themselves, or a ...

Dear Liverpool Ken Luka Moore was great, thanks for the link. And a great website. Also loved your pen-slip, as you wished for a 'Christmas-free Hallelujah'. Could it perchance be Christmas, rather than Hallelujah, that's bothering you at the mo? And another question: do you never find that trying t...

Argh, I'm so sick of Hallelujah - it's everywhere, and every snot nosed punk that reckons he or she can sing a lick to save their ass is covering it and it's really sending me round the bend. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArrrgghh I don't know who you are, KjXXXer, or where you live, but if you were sick ...

Laura, I'm so hot it burns - this radiator really should be switched off that I'm sitting on. And so young, I just keep getting younger and younger. And as rich as a cherry chocolate cheese cake. OK OK, if you must : dark hair, dark eyes, more than double the age I was when I wasn't in my teens any ...

Scarlett's been spoiled. Maybe she thinks all elderly Jewish men must want anything she wants, with her voluptuous blondeness - but Lennie isn't Woody, Scarlett dear. Wake up and smell the roses. There's a Hallelujah chorus being sung, but not for you. (Yikes, how did I get so mean? Maybe I resent s...

Just a quick suggestion: I only realised about this meet-up through a private email from Henning.... I know I'm a bit stupid, but I've spent so much time lately on the News threads, I totally forgot to check out Events and other parts of the site, and until now I never even realised that many of you...

PS. Just seen previous post and listened to the four Norwegians' version. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
My favourite is Leonard's 2008 Tour version, then all the other great ones, together.

This really is SO much fun... I can't imagine Lennie himself being anything other than bemused/amused/tickled/maybe even a little wowed by all this. After all, he seemed so genuinely thrilled by the Glastonbury thing - all those youngsters joining the Oldies in thrall. I was wondering what Lorca and...

Yup, weird and wonderful...

Isn't this fun???!!! All us serious-minded, maybe even po-faced Cohenites + Cohen scholars going head to head with screaming teenyboppers to get 'our song' into the charts! Hurrah for Hallelujahs, in all their forms. Just a few comments : - Paula, loved your eagle-eyed spotting of consecutive Christ...

PS. Hydriot (not rigid or pompous at all): I totally agree with your reaction to Alexandra's second rendition - however much The Cowell-meister and his gang may have tried to shoehorn her into meaninglessness, her voice and her emotion reconnected with the song anyway. Hurrah for transcendence amids...

Good point, Friend of John Etherington. I think it could a apply to most of Leonard's music, not just the song with the obviously religious-sounding chorus. He answers a personal spiritual quest, whether it's for religion (Old or New Testament), poetry, sensuality, truth, wisdom, wit, or any other f...