Tracing "Hallelujah" From Obscurity To Ubiquity
Back in September of 2010, noted music journalist (and former editor-in-chief of SPIN and Vibe magazines) Alan Light was among 4,000 people sitting in the Jacob Javitz Center for Yom Kippur services when the Congregation Beit Simchat Torah choir took the stage to conclude the solemn proceedings with a stirring version of "Hallelujah."
"I just thought, 'Man, this song is really in a very different place now,'" says Light. "Obviously it's attained a very different status in the world if here at the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, at the climax of the service, that's the song they come out and sing. And this was the same year that Justin Timberlake had sung it at the 'Hope for Haiti' telethon, and k.d. lang had sung it at the Winter Olympics, so I just started to think of what I knew of the story of the song and that it was not a quick or easy road to get to that kind of place."
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