Leonard Cohen obsessed over Hallelujah.
He rewrote it endlessly, over 80 different verses.
He couldn’t let it go.
When it finally landed on his 1984 album Various Positions, Sony refused to release it in America.
Walter Yetnikoff, the President of Columbia Records, famously told Cohen:
“Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.”
The record flopped.
Cohen’s version was almost forgotten.
Seven years later, a French music magazine gave away a cover-mount CD called I’m Your Fan. On it was John Cale’s stripped-down cover of Hallelujah.
That CD landed in the hands of Jeff Buckley, who was dating a girl in Paris at the time.
Bored, waiting for his date to get ready, Buckley played the CD.
He fell in love. But he didn’t polish it.
He didn’t overthink it.
He sang it live. Raw. Haunted. Imperfect.
His version bled vulnerability. That’s the Hallelujah the world knows, sung at weddings and funerals, streamed over a billion times online.
Cohen’s genius got strangled by his perfectionism.
Buckley’s vulnerability resurrected it.
The Trap of Perfectionism
True creativity is a spiritual experience transmuted through creative work.
It’s the invisible force that joins us in a moment of human connection, beyond words.
True creativity has soul.
Flawless is soulless.
Perfectionism is the creative ego’s way of spiritually bypassing vulnerability.
And what truly moves people isn’t perfection. It’s soul.
Perfection is an ego trap.
Another cage. The creative ego convinces you that flawless is safe.
Perfectionism is a scarcity mindset.
It’s the avoidance of criticism and rejection.
The pursuit of creative truth is abundance.
Scarcity operates in the frequency of fear and people-pleasing.
Abundance operates in the frequency of flow and soul.
One contracts.
The other expands.
One attracts.
The other repels.
Machines + AI demand perfection.
Sensitive, creative humans demand truth.
Confuse the two, and the connection is lost.
The Creative Purpose
Highly sensitive creatives exist to express themselves authentically, helping others feel seen and heard.
Maybe your message is in a book. A record. A poem. A startup. A YouTube video. A painting. Thought leadership.
The medium is irrelevant; the creative truth is everything.
But perfectionism lies.
It steals the joy of creation because it fears rejection.
It craves external validation to feed its insatiable insecurity.
Scarcity leaks your energy externally, begging for approval from the invisible audience.
Abundance anchors your energy internally, trusting truth to resonate.
What the Masters Knew
David Bowie said:
“All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess and please the audience.
My work is always stronger when I am selfish about it.”
Be more selfish with your work.
There are only two ways to create:
Second-guess what the audience wants and compromise your creativity to please them.
Create what you love and find the audience who agrees with you.
The first is scarcity…
The second is an act of rebellious generosity.
Being able to connect deeply with an audience is the difference between a flop and a multi-platinum record, a book and a New York Times bestseller, a video and a super-viral video.
It was the difference between Jeff Buckley’s version and Leonard Cohen’s.
Same song, different energy.
Connection can’t be forced. Creative authenticity can’t be perfected.
It can only be felt.
Final Word
Perfectionism doesn’t protect your work.
It buries its soul.