Alan Light Quote

Needless to say, the song [Hallelujah] was now a climax in every show [of the 2009 Leonard Cohen tour], received like holy scripture. It belonged in a category with seeing Bob Dylan sing Like a Rolling Stone or watching Bruce Springsteen perform Born to Run—it was an event that people simply wanted to witness, to say they had seen. It took on a power that had to do with the song's history first, its feeling second, and its details hardly at all. Every performance carried with it a sense of where this song had been, who had sung it,where and how every listener had first encountered it; it had reached a place where it was something to be experienced, rather than listened to.

Alan Light

Needless to say, the song [Hallelujah] was now a climax in every show [of the 2009 Leonard Cohen tour], received like holy scripture. It belonged in a category with seeing Bob Dylan sing Like a Rolling Stone or watching Bruce Springsteen perform Born to Run—it was an event that people simply wanted to witness, to say they had seen. It took on a power that had to do with the song's history first, its feeling second, and its details hardly at all. Every performance carried with it a sense of where this song had been, who had sung it,where and how every listener had first encountered it; it had reached a place where it was something to be experienced, rather than listened to.

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About Alan Light

Alan Light (born August 4, 1966) is an American journalist who has been a rock critic for Rolling Stone and the editor-in-chief for Vibe, Spin, and Tracks.