Hallelujah poll: Vote
for your favourite version
The versions: Kermit
the frog | Mark
Viduka tribute | Chris
Moyles' lamb bhuna | My
Halloumia | Jeff
Buckley | Bob Dylan
| k.d. lang | Sheryl
Crowe | Rufus
Wainwright | U2
| Bon Jovi | John
Cale | Imogen Heap
| JLS | Alexandra
Burke
By the standards of Trafalgar Square demos it was a decidedly muted affair.
Friday night’s internet-organised “flash mob” in central London attracted
only about a dozen people.
To be fair, one had travelled all the way from Bristol to be there; it was a
cold night just before Christmas; and, anyway, just how often has the square
seen a protest in favour of a mere pop song?
In the eyes of the group this was, of course, no mere pop song – it was a
classic and this was the “definitive version, sung by a god”.
They had gathered to beseech the public to put the American singer Jeff
Buckley’s version of the Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah in its rightful
place at the top of the charts this afternoon.
Musical history, of sorts, will be made today – and the country is on
tenterhooks. Well, it would be if the outcome were not as inevitable as a
Christmas afternoon snooze.
Tune in to BBC Radio 1’s Top 40 singles between 4pm and 7pm and you will hear
Hallelujah at least twice, possibly three times.
Last to be played, in the slot reserved for the No 1, will almost certainly be
the latest cover version by the winner of The X Factor reality TV show,
Alexandra Burke.
To the horror of the song’s devotees – but perhaps to the relief of parents of
young children – she has desexed the song, somehow gliding over the bondage
theme of one of the middle verses (“She tied you to a kitchen chair / She
broke your throne and she cut your hair”) , accompanied by a jingly
Christmas choir. Burke has left the angst of the original behind as surely
as she has her previous life as a waitress.
Before this – probably immediately before it at No 2 – will come Buckley’s
more soulful and sexy interpretation released on his 1994 Grace album three
years before he died. The placing of Cohen’s own rendition of his 1984
classic is less certain. It was a late entrant at No 34 in the midweek
rankings. That’s what you get for being dour at Christmas.
Not since the prerock era, when versions of the same song by different artists
often vied for popularity, has the public been bombarded with so many
variations of one short piece of music.
And not since the height of Britpop more than a decade ago, when Blur and
Oasis released singles in the same week, has there been so much interest in
which singer and which song would reach the No 1 slot. This past week the
charts have almost seemed important again to people who are old enough to
vote.
Even the prime minister was moved on Friday to announce that he would be
buying Burke’s version to give as a Christmas present. Who would have
thought it: cheery Gordon Brown a fan of grumpy old Leonard Cohen?
“I know [Brown] wants us to keep buying tat we don’t need in order to help
prop up our banana economy, but this is surely a step too far,” said one
puzzled blogger. YET, putting the prime minister’s prized endorsement aside,
this is a different musical age from even the mid1990s. The chorus of
Hallelujahs provides an illustration of the changing shape of the music
business and popular culture in the internet era.
The song’s revival is the result of the patronage of one man, Simon Cowell –
or, more accurately, of one of his seemingly endless television talent
shows. When a contestant in American Idol, the US equivalent of The X
Factor, sang the song earlier this year, Cowell remarked that Buckley’s
version was “one of my favourite songs of all time”. Downloads of Buckley’s
recording sent it to the top of the internet charts almost overnight.
You can picture Cowell raising his eyebrow as he recognised that there was
money to be made.
“Imagine Simon Cowell’s predicament, knowing that he was responsible for a No
1 record but was not making any money out of it,” said Paul Gambaccini, the
veteran radio and television presenter. “Seeing that Hallelujah could be
such a big hit he would have said, ‘Next time I’m going to make the money
out of it’.”
Nobody does that better than the prince of prepackaged pop stars. Burke’s
prize for winning The X Factor was a contract with Cowell’s Syco label, a
division of Sony BMG, with Hallelujah released as her first single the day
after her victory.
Cohen took two to five years to write the original, depending on which report
you believe. Cowell does not pause for a second. Sales of Burke’s version
broke records of previous winners by selling 149,546 downloads within two
days.
The guardians of pop’s purity were horrified but delighted in the irony of one
of the song’s opening lines that goes: “You don’t really care for music, do
you?”
Paul Sexton, a freelance rock writer, agreed. “It is not about the music any
more, just about the money,” he said. “The X Factor is not a music programme
. . . like all reality shows it plays on people’s fascination with the
individual. Music plays a pretty poor second fiddle.”
Buckley’s more obsessive fans care so very much for music and they want you to
know about it. They launched an internet campaign aimed at restoring the
primacy of their hero’s version.
Here is a fascinating side of the Hallelujah phenomenon. Boosted by a Facebook
group that yesterday had 127,000 members and was arranging to have a “mass
playing” of the song at 5pm today, Buckley’s song roared into the charts.
Yet it was not physically released by its record label and was available only
as a download. A few clicks and the fans had created a single that in any
other week of the year would be a shoo-in as No 1. Ironically, they are
making money for Cowell’s music label backer: Sony BMG owns the rights to
both Buckley’s and Cohen’s work.
Gambaccini, for one, does not take the line that shows such as The X Factor
are responsible for killing creativity and fail to nurture fresh talent,
believing that “popular music is no longer the way the younger generation
communicate – the internet is”.
Anyway, all those who decry the commercialisation of a classic song should
remember that it owes its prominence in the Cohen canon to a green monster
with self-esteem issues. It was not until it was performed by John Cale, the
Welsh balladeer, for the 2001 cartoon film Shrek that interest in it was
really revived.
Then the deluge of cover versions began. Log on to YouTube and you can see
versions by Rufus Wainright, kd lang, Bono, Bon Jovi, Bob Dylan, Willie
Nelson, Sheryl Crow and Kermit the Frog among others.
Now a series of parodies are following, ranging from Lamb Bhuna by Chris
Moyles, the Radio 1 DJ, to a Greek-Cypriot singer’s homage to his favourite
cheese: My Halloumia.
COHEN has maintained a resolute silence on his song’s success and the merits
of the relative versions. But this weekend Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert,
said her son would want to see Burke’s version at No 1: “Jeff always
supported young and struggling artists and so I think he would defer to
Alexandra for the No 1 slot. He would just be happy all this is happening
and that his work was being so appreciated, too.”
However, she could not resist adding that when she met Cohen by chance in Los
Angeles several years ago he had admitted that he felt “he never needed to
sing Hallelujah himself again” after her son had recorded it.
In a week or so maybe we will feel the same way.
Additional reporting: Sofia Zabolotskih
Hallelujah: the lost lyrics
Leonard Cohen wrote dozens of verses of Hallelujah that have never been
heard. Roland White suggests some contemporary updates for the songwriter
“Now I’ve heard people say the country’s gone belly-up
So slouch on the sofa and just turn the telly up
To see how The X Factor soothes you
It’s a mark of how bad the economy’s goin’
That we cheer ourselves up with a dose of Len Cohen
The glum bloke who wrote Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
The banks are collapsing, the wolf’s at the door
And now the pound sterling has dropped to the floor
Recession’s cold wind blows right through you
Yet one person’s loving the hullaballoo
Gordon has found himself something to do
And from your lips he wants to hear Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
From the centre of London to out in the sticks
Poor Woolies is closing its pick and its mix
But don’t let this grim news subdue you
Just try to establish the big, broader picture
At least Simon Cowell is getting much richer
Though, hang on, that’s really a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Please try not to look quite so ruddy depressed
One day we will see it was all for the best
On that day you will feel a new you
And Leonard’s so grateful for all the attention
If you download this song, it tops up his pension
So once again everyone sing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah”
— Last week the internet began to fill with parodies. One of the most amusing
was from the Radio One DJ Chris Moyles, whose version sang of the woes of
missing out on a lamb bhuna. Its first verse goes like this:
“Oh Saturday was a special night
The X Factor final was so tight
We ordered takeaway from the Prince of India
We had onion bhajis for the wife
And chicken korma with pilau rice
But when it came they’d forgotten my lamb bhuna
My lamb bhuna, my lamb bhuna,
My lamb bhuna, my lamb bhuna”
— A more specialised version by a Greek-Cypriot posted on YouTube sang
the praises of his favourite cheese, My Halloumia. Another, recorded last
year, was a tribute to the former Middlesbrough footballer Mark Viduka
— Of the straight covers, the debate over which is the best is seemingly
endless and just a bit tedious. Jeff Buckley’s version was ranked No 259 in
Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs Ever in 2004; Cohen’s version
did not make the list
— Others swear by recordings by kd lang and Kathryn Williams. Perhaps
they have not heard the version by Kermit the Frog, which has a growing
number of devotees
