Click on the links below to hear other versions of this song:
Jeff Buckley | Bob
Dylan | k.d. lang
| Sheryl
Crowe | Rufus
Wainwright | U2
| Bon Jovi | John
Cale | Imogen Heap
| JLS | Alexandra
Burke
It's an exquisitely beautiful song that was written by the mournful Canadian
singer Leonard Cohen and later made famous by the mournful American singer
Jeff Buckley. Now Hallelujah is absolutely certain - bar only the apocalypse
- to be No 1 in the charts this Christmas.
Stop, if you can bear to, for just a moment to recall some of the Christmas
pap we've endured over the years; remember Mr Blobby, Benny Hill's milkman
and St Winifred School Choir's homage to Grandma? Surely, you might think as
the trauma recedes, having a great song as the Christmas No 1 of 2008 can
only be a good thing.
Well, yes and no. Because for a great many extremely angry people, Christmas
2008's Hallelujah revival is the apocalypse.
The song itself they really, really love: it's the singer, and all that they
believe she stands for, that they revile. This unfortunate is Alexandra
Burke, an unmournful, 20-year-old Londoner who used to sing at weddings and
barmitzvahs but who last Saturday was voted winner of this year's series of
the hit talent show The X Factor. She is now signed to Simon Cowell's label
Syco, and Hallelujah is her winner's single.
The purists are aghast: The X Factor is corporate Mammon, they rail, a cynical
franchise trampling unsoftly on their beloved Hallelujah. Take John (not his
real name), for instance. Hallelujah is part of the fabric of John's life:
his parents met through their love of Cohen and the Canadian
singer/songwriter's dirgy, haunting voice soundtracked his childhood.
Years later, when John himself got married, he played Jeff Buckley's 1994
cover of Hallelujah at the wedding. When John's wife died, it was played at
the funeral.
Early on Wednesday morning, John cracked. It is “unforgivable”, he posted on
Facebook, for “a shameless, self-promoting tosser like Simon Cowell to even
think of besmirching the legacy of this song!” On MySpace, Facebook,
YouTube, Last.fm, Bebo and beyond, thousands of similarly enraged Cohen and
Buckley aficionados are rising up alongside John to protest. As well as
hurling a lot of gratuitously nasty comments at the high-trousered
impresario and his latest protégée, they are also mounting a fightback. The
rebel HQ is Facebook, where more than 75,000 members have joined various
groups dedicated to blocking Burke's Hallelujah taking the top spot - by
downloading enough copies of Buckley's to beat her to it.
“Do not buy this pop, overproduced and heartless version of perhaps one of the
most poetic songs of the last century. Buy Jeff Buckley's,” exhorts one
group. “We can make this work,” says another: “and make a huge statement
against the barrage of cynical, manufactured pop dirtying up our charts.”
Yet another says: “Even if we can't prevent this travesty we can at the very
least make our revulsion known.” There are plans for a demonstration in
Trafalgar Square tomorrow.
Up to a point, people power is working. Buckley's version came in at number 30
in last week's chart, and when the unofficial midweek results were revealed
on Wednesday night it had stormed into the number 3 spot, just behind Leona
Lewis (last year's winner of The X Factor). HMV's veteran chart analyst
Gennaro Castaldo is convinced that Burke's Hallelujah will be No 1 on Sunday
evening. He says that there are predictions that as many as half a million
copies of the single could be downloaded and sold by then - but also reckons
that Buckley's has more than a fighting chance of coming in second. He
added: “The Jeff Buckley cover version was only 7,000 or so sales behind
Leona Lewis. So in theory, the momentum is with it to get to No 2 by Sunday.
“Although apparently Leona is on the Royal Variety Show this evening, which
might give her sales a boost.” Leona Lewis is, remember, also a Cowell
artist, on Cowell's label. So knocking her down a peg in favour of Jeff
Buckley would give the Hallelujah underground a victory, of sorts.
Whatever the chart says on Sunday, Leonard Cohen will be the biggest
beneficiary of all this. He probably deserves it: his former business
manager allegedly misappropriated Cohen's $10 million retirement fund. And
not only did he agonise for two years, he has said, before finally
completing the song in 1984, he also wrote 80 verses. “I filled two
notebooks and I remember being in the Royalton Hotel [in New York], on the
carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor and saying, ‘I can't
finish this song'.”
But finish it he did, stripping the verses down for the version released on
his 1985 album Various Positions. Bob Dylan loved it - and covered it live.
In Cohen's next recorded version, from a concert in 1988, the lyrics were
significantly tweaked, less Christian, more intimate. It was this version
that inspired John Cale to ask Cohen to send him the verses, of which Cohen
sent 15. Cale rejigged them, rearranged the song and made it a regular on
his set list. This arrangement was then covered, gloriously, by Jeff Buckley
on his 1994 album Grace - and when Buckley drowned a few years later his
Hallelujah became, for thousands of his fans, a defining part of his musical
legacy.
Since then, Hallelujah has become a standard. Bon Jovi, kd lang, Sheryl Crow,
Bono, Kathryn Williams, Willie Nelson and Damien Rice have all recorded
notable interpretations, and The X Factor is far from the first time the
song has been used on-screen. It was used in The West Wing and Basquiat, and
covered by Rufus Wainwright (who says of Cohen, “I really believe he's the
greatest living poet on earth”) for the soundtrack to Shrek
(although Cale's version, confusingly, was used in the film). Producers of the
fantastically schlocky teen melodrama The O.C. liked Hallelujah so much that
they used it twice; first Buckley's version and then a new cover, by Imogen
Heap.
“I didn't have any personal relationship with the song, so it was a lot easier
for me to attack it,” she said yesterday. “But I knew what a huge song it
was.” With only two days free to record it, Heap planned at first to decline
The O.C.'s request to record it, but then, while singing in the shower, was
inspired to record an a cappella version, accompanied only by the background
noise of London recorded in her Waterloo flat. Contemplating the possessive
outrage of the Buckley and Cohen fans at The X Factor, Heap, a covered
songwriter herself, says: “You can't chain a song up. It has a life of its
own. Once it's left the studio it does what it likes, and there is nothing
you can do about it.” Which rather dashes the wistful suggestion of one
Facebook Hallelujah rebel: “You know they have buildings that you cannot
touch? Historical ones? They should do the same with songs.”
Yet Hallelujah, which has been covered by more than 100 artists around the
world, had already lived a full, promiscuous life before The X Factor picked
it up anew. A key factor in Hallelujah's capacity to acquire such an
intensely personal meaning, and to stir up so much passion in so many
performers and listeners is its ambiguity: some of its content, not to
mention its one-word chorus (and title) has just enough religiosity to allow
the X Factor producers to add the jing-a-ling of sleigh-bells to Burke's
cover and pitch it at Britain for Christmas. Yet for many Hallelujah is
about lost romantic love, or as Buckley put it, a paeon to “the hallelujah
of an orgasm”. Cohen himself has said of the song: “It's a desire to affirm
my life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm; with
emotion.” And Alexandra Burke's version, however mass-market its origins
stick in the craw of the Facebook rebels, is certainly enthusiastic and
emotional enough to rank alongside any other cover.
What might assault their sensibilities even more is the revelation that Simon
Cowell is just like them: he loves their beloved Buckley version, too. On a
previous series of American Idol (the US equivalent of X Factor), Hallelujah
was covered by a dreadlocked contestant called Jason Castro. From his
judge's seat, Cowell said: “The Jeff Buckley version of that song is one of
my favourite songs of all time.” Castro's performance, and the downloads it
prompted, persuaded Cowell to use the song this year in The X Factor. Cowell
himself is in Barbados now, relaxing. But his fellow judge Louis Walsh
called from Ireland yesterday and revealed that he, too, is a diehard
Hallelujah lover.
“I have ten versions of it on my iPod - I particularly love kd lang's version.
Everybody says Jeff Buckley's is the best version but I prefer Cohen's.
Rufus's is OK, too.” Walsh cheerfully concedes that he can relate to the
Hallelujah purists' outrage, but sticks gamely behind Burke. “She makes the
song different. And the really good thing is that Leonard Cohen is going to
make some money out of it. She's brought it to a whole new audience who
don't know that song. The X Factor audience think it is a new song. It's
going to help Jeff Buckley's album [Sony is releasing a Buckley “best of”
album next month]. Everyone's going to win in the end.” After a brief,
knowledgeable chat about some artists just as venerable and venerated as
Cohen - including Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, Walsh returns to The X Factor.
“I think we should revisit all these great songs and bring them to a new
generation of audience. I really do.” Oh dear. Things could get worse for
the old-school purists. Next year, if he reapplies for the show just like
Burke did (she was a failed contestant in 2005) we could see the odd-looking
schoolboy Eoghan Quigg at No 1, with a cover of Desolation Row. Facebook's
servers would most likely explode.
Covered in glory (or not)
There have been more than a hundred recordings of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.
Ben Machell reviews his Top Ten
Leonard Cohen
Where you might have heard it: 2am in halls of residence circa 1985, and
funerals.
What it's like: Laughing Len's sepulchral, if slightly synthy original.
When to play it: while trying to seduce humourless, black woolly
jumper-wearing German exchange students.
Jeff Buckley
Where you might have heard it: when Mischa Barton's character dies in The O.C.
What it's like: clinically proven to make teenage girls fall in love with a
sensitive, handsome dead man.
When to play it: whenever you need to show you're as sensitive as a handsome
dead man.
Alexandra Burke
Where you might have heard it:
on X Factor; in Argos; at your Nan's house.
What it's like: powerful enough to make Cheryl Cole weep.
When to play it: whenever you want to make Cheryl Cole's mascara run.
kdlang
Where you might have heard it: dark, smoky bars selling cheap vermouth.
What it's like: a swooning reinterpretation (“she tied you to her kitchen
chair/she broke your throne and cut your hair” etc).
When to play it: when you realise that no one understands you, but it's OK -
“you'll always have music”.
Rufus Wainwright
Where you might have heard it: plush cabaret joints selling fancy highballs.
What it's like: you can hear the gritting of teeth as he just about keeps it
to a simple, straight-up, singer'n'piano take.
When to play it: after your second Alka-Seltzer the following morning.
John Cale
Where you might have heard it: the sad bit in Shrek.
What it's like: a stark, trembling rendition with a hint of valley boy
enunciation.
When to play it: over YouTube montages of your dead cat.
Bon Jovi
When you might have heard it: by mistake.
What it's like: has all the gravitas of Slade singing Jerusalem.
Where to play it: New Jersey.
Bono
Where you might have heard it: initially, online, for
a laugh; subsequently, your every waking dream.
What it's like: a trip-hop-tinged reinvention that could soundtrack an advert
for a horrible men's fragrance.
Where to play it: in court, to Bono and a judge and jury.
Imogen Heap
Where you might have heard it: again, in the episode of The O.C. when Marissa
gets it.
What it's like: a breathy, incorporeal a capella cut of woe.
Where to play it: when it's late and no one wants to leave your house.
JLS
Where you might have heard it: the final of X Factor.
What it's like: surprisingly hard to dislike, dry ice, hair gel, fitted
waistcoats and diamond earrings notwithstanding.
Where to play it: at lateral-thinking Christian youth groups.
Visit timesonline.co.uk/music and imogenheap.co.uk to hear these Hallelujahs
and judge them for yourself
