I daresay I'm in a minority of one, but I cannot abide Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. In my opinion one of the most overrated songs in all of popular music.
He's a poet. And a writer. He never claimed to be a singer, and songwriting always was a side job that earned money. If you want to know how talented Cohen was, read instead of trying to listen.
(Reference to his Tower of Song — and I can hear the wink as he calls his voice golden.)
I'm not saying people can't enjoy media that uses religious influences in ways contrary to their original purpose. My point is that a line gets crossed when the intent is to create something that's not respectful and people somehow misinterpret it as an endorsement.
(I don't really see "a tale of hedonism" in it, either. I mean, it has sex in it, for sure, but that's not the same thing. It's a song of damaged and broken relationships, not of consequence-free one-night stands.)
[EDITED to add:] That last sentence is an oversimplification. There are lots of versions of the song, even if you consider only Cohen's own ones, with different balances between the religious and the sexual/romantic elements; the original 1984 version isn't "a song of damaged and broken relationships", or at least not only that. You could even, kinda-sorta, call it "uplifting". Later versions, Cohen's and others, not so much.
But none of them, so far as I know, is a "tale of hedonism" in any useful sense.
Whenever I’ve been at my lowest, for ex, the various versions of Dylan’s "Not Dark Yet" have always been a source of comfort.
(I suppose the name of the song itself is literally blasphemous, but I don't think this is what you meant?)
> My point is that a line gets crossed when the intent is to create something that's not respectful and people somehow misinterpret it as an endorsement.
Not sure what you mean. That Cohen was disrespectful to the biblical sources? The man doesn't use so much of that kind of symbolism in his songs if he doesn't feel a deep connection to it, and Cohen uses a lot of it, consistently. And, I think, he already answers this question in the song itself - what's "the line"? Where does it come from?
What is your basis for calling it blasphemous?
What is the other metric you're implying?
Because "popular" is the only metric in your statement and if that's also the metric you imply with "overrated", then the statement doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
I must say I find it slightly hard to believe that this isn't obvious - but I hope this explanation clarifies things.
"popular music" != "pop music"
The term "popular music" is an umbrella for music that has "wide appeal" and associated with "large audiences" [0] -- i.e. it's a statistical term.
It can apply to many "genres" (that's the music industry term, rather than categories).
One of those genres[1] is "pop music"[2]. And after your clarification, I now assume your OP actually meant "pop music".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_genre [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music
And I would not categorise Leonard Cohen as pop music, by your criterion, as it would not be useful. "Pop music" as a term used by the music industry changes it's definition along with people's musical taste. If you take the right moment in time, an extremely broad variety of music would be "pop music".