leonardcohenforum.com

here's katherine jenkins's `defence` regarding her bowdlerised version :

...Her favourite track on the new album, she says, is Cohen's "Hallelujah".

"I love that piece," she says. "It makes me cry."

So why did she leave out the second verse? "

Did we?" she asks.

Yes you did, I say, the verse with the lines, "You saw her bathing on the roof ... She tied you to a kitchen chair / And broke your throne and cut your hair." Why edit that out?

"Yes, well we did have to look at the lyrics," she says briskly, suddenly a frontier-town schoolmarm. "Because it's not strictly a religious song, is it? And we changed one line as well."

The line in question is, "I remember when I moved in you," which has been altered to: "I remember when I moved with you."

It seems a shame to take an image of sexual connection, and change it to read as though the singer was moving house to Croydon. "It's a beautiful song but it had to be adapted," she says firmly...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 79731.html

p.s. allegedly a nasty tabloid was about to reveal katherine's history of drug-taking - hence weekend's preëmptive confession!

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales ... -22169753/

Well, that is something else entirely. Crazy music business!

And, to answer Dutt's question - no, Katherine Jenkins is not in the BBC documentary celebration of "Hallelujah".

I think this is very good. Take a look:
http://nicholadeane.wordpress.com/2008/ ... -pronouns/
Dave

Thanks for the link, Dave. Nice article. I especially liked the "sword in the stone" analogy: when a song like Hallelujah exists, how can one resist having a go at it?

The latest discovery for me was just tonight - a very nice acoustic guitar rendition by a young Canadian singer, Ellisa Hartman

why not upload it to youtube so we can all enjoy it!

Really enjoyed this documentary.

I have to say I totally agree with the lady who said it is not really a song for female singers. I think it is very much a male song and Katherine Jenkins totally murders it!!! Having said that I thought the Alison Crowe version was really powerful.

Not only am I a long-time LC fan, but I just found out that a friend of mine, who is now a musician in England, is featured on this program. I went to the BBC site where the program used to stream, but it is no longer available. I am hesitating to ask my friend because she is probably not tech-savvy enough to send me an mp3 of it. Does anyone have an electronic version that they could send? Or do you know where one is available online? I will keep looking in the meantime, as I am sure it is somewhere out there on the internets.
Thanks!

EDIT: I just found it on Youtube! But I would still be interested in an mp3 version if one is out there. My friend is Helen Walford who is featured briefly at the very beginning of the program.

katherine jenkins was criticised by vanessa feltz in yesterday's daily express for mispronunciation when singing hallelujah.

although if memory serves leonard at glastonbury (or was it elsewhere) has committed the same `sin` - singing "you" where it should be "ya".

i assumed i'd find vanessa's comments online and i've thrown away the newspaper.

alas, i can't find the relevant bit of her page - the daily express appears to only print the main part of her column - what a swizz.

ha! ha! - i've found the column which (a bit of luck) i tore out.

here's vanessa's comments in full :

in real life katherine jenkins looks almost ludicrously angelic. she's tiny, porcelain complexioned and blonder than any woman with the voice of an angel has a right to be.

katherine is absorbed in bringing her operatic tones to bear on well-known pop songs, effortlessly elevating the mundane to the near celestial.

all was going magnificently at a charity tea party until katherine applied her meticulously round vowel sounds to leonard cohen's mega-hit hallelulah.

professor henry higgins would have been proud as she intoned with exquisite clarity :

"you don't really care for music do YOU?"

just one problem, "do you" doesn't rhyme with hallelujah.

clever cohen had written the more slovenly "do ya" for a reason.

is this the only recorded case of perfect pronunciation making something less clear?

i like charlotte church but katherine doesn't appeal to me.

although of course there's room for both in the showbiz firmament!



http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sh ... rough.html

Vannessa obviously hasn't heard Leonard in concert recently singing "you" himself

Yeah, I preferred the Ya myself.

sebmelmoth2003 wrote:

The latest discovery for me was just tonight - a very nice acoustic guitar rendition by a young Canadian singer, Ellisa Hartman

why not upload it to youtube so we can all enjoy it!

It's taken the earth to move around the sun, but, I am now happy to be able to satisfy your request - as the young artist I first heard last year has now released her debut album, Arbutus, and it contains this version of Hallelujah:

http://music.ellisahartman.com/track/hallelujah

(click on the arrow/pointer in the top left to play the song)

best o' the season to all!!

tank ooo

de rien