A Review Of Hymns Of The 49th Parallel

Introduction

K. D. Lang’s album Hymns of the 49th Parallel is widely considered to be one of the best albums that Canada has ever produced. The album consists of eleven songs, all of which are covers of tracks originally created by some of Canada’s best musicians. The significance of the album is to almost glorify Canadian music, artists, and the Canadian way of life. This essay examines the significance of naming the album Hymns of the 49th Parallel and discovers the significance of the song in relation to the artist’s vision of Canada.

Background

The 49th parallel refers to a circle of latitude 49° north of the equator, a straight line that was chosen to demarcate the border between Canada and the United States of America. The “49th Parallel”

The song “Hallelujah”, which was originally sung by Leonard Cohen, is featured as the 6th song on the album. The song features many strong biblical references, particularly in the characters of Samson and David. Many incorrectly view the song as a gospel song, when it is not. According to Lang, the song is an internal conflict about the friction between worshipping God and pursuing earthly pleasures (Cohen, 2008). The significance of this song to Lang’s album is that apart from being originally sung by a Canadian, Leonard Cohen, the song best describes the conflict that most new agers have. In their pursuit of peace and piety, new agers also served as the ambassadors of the sexual revolution that swept North America in the 60s, 70s and 80s. There is a function that religion has on society and any society uses religion for its own end. The Canadian society used the new age movement to liberalize Christianity and to make sexual freedom an aspect of life divorced from biblical sin. “Hallelujah” is a prime example of the conflict between liberal lifestyle and conservative Christian beliefs. It would seem that liberalism won that war. Forbes (2005) posits that there is always a conflict between popular culture and religion, and that this fight arises out of the different views that religion and

In this song, the singer describes a man’s love for his girlfriend as well as the difficulties and pain inherent to loving another. The song describes the pressures that humans face, and how their struggles against difficulties end in failure. Despite this, it is the efforts made against these failures that eventually add up to an individual’s worth (Mahan, 2005). The significance of this song to the album is that it attempts to deify love, and it does this by examining how man tries his best at love, just the same way in which he tries his best at being good and religious. Even though man will always lose in his efforts at devotion and pure love, he will eventually be redeemed through his constant