Singing The Praises Of ‘Hallelujah’ With A Film About Leonard Cohen’s Classic Song – Contenders Documentary
deadline.comLeonard Cohen’s signature song, “Hallelujah,” had its journey to music immortality stopped almost at birth by a record executive.
The chief of Cohen’s label, Columbia, vetoed the finished album containing the track in 1984 because he considered it unmarketable in the United States.
An intervention by an influential labelmate of Cohen’s, one Bob Dylan, helped “Hallelujah” to escape front-office purgatory and, over time, become the soaring secular hymn that musicians love to cover and listeners play at both weddings and funerals. RELATED: The Contenders Documentary – Deadline’s Full Coverage Dylan, in fact, might have been the first to cover the song. “Dylan loved ‘Hallelujah,’” filmmaker Dayna Goldfine said at Deadline’s Contenders Documentary event.
Goldfine and her husband, Daniel Geller, are co-directors and co-writers of Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song, from Sony Pictures Classics.
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