Hallelujah on UK X-Factor (all threads merged here)

[John Etherington]

That's right, it come to this
yes it's come to this
and wasn't it a long way...up

[sebmelmoth2003]

i've located the exact quote from steve allen : "i don't think leonard cohen ever praised the lord in his life".

[scarifier]

Here's a rather nice comparison of the three charting versions from yesterday's Mirror, of all places:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/200 ... -20978695/

Mark Jefferies is clearly a fan - he describes Leonard Cohen as "Legendary writer of Hallelujah" and his version as "authoritative and beautiful".

[scorp]

That's right, it come to this
yes it's come to this
and wasn't it a long way...up

until love itself, love itself,
is gone.

[AvidCohenFan]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/de ... -christmas
Most crucial part of that is: "One version that is rarely praised is Cohen's own, hamstrung by its chintzy 80s production. But on stage at Glastonbury this year, as sunset purpled the sky, he wrenched every atom of emotion from a song which only he fully understood, and seemed to deliver a timely reminder: This is my song. Everyone else just borrows it."
In my opinion, Hallelujah is one of Cohen's songs which is relatively nothing to write home about, whatever version it is. I don't think everyone would be so fanatical about it if they knew that in Cohen world such lyrics are average.

[jillian0108]

I think it is exciting that there is so much discussion and interest in Halleujah , no matter what the interpretation or venue.
My first encounter with the song and interest in Leonard Cohen was watching Bon Jovi sing it a show on Country TV channel, no less.
He told the audience that he heard someone sing it and complimented the song. The musician told him it was written by l.c. (duh! said Bon Jovi)
I looked into other versions and that led me down the path of no return.
Because it is multilayered and powerful it can touch the young, old, lost and seekers everywhere. Personally, I can respond to the song differently depending where I am at spiritually, emotionally, in or out of love. The fact that the song is out there for others to enjoy and contemplate, no matter how it came about is a wondrous thing.

When English musicians discovered the Blues, people criticized them for not being authentic. In an interview with some Blues singers, they said they welcomed it because the white audiences became interested in the roots. L(BB King say you don't have to be Black to sing the Blues)
This is what happened to me with Halleujah (nobody says bon jovi's version is the best) but that is how I "discovered" L.C. There are many pathways that take you to the same place. If one is x factor, halleujah for that.!
jillian

[scorp]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/de ... -christmas
Most crucial part of that is: "One version that is rarely praised is Cohen's own, hamstrung by its chintzy 80s production. But on stage at Glastonbury this year, as sunset purpled the sky, he wrenched every atom of emotion from a song which only he fully understood, and seemed to deliver a timely reminder: This is my song. Everyone else just borrows it."
In my opinion, Hallelujah is one of Cohen's songs which is relatively nothing to write home about, whatever version it is. I don't think everyone would be so fanatical about it if they knew that in Cohen world such lyrics are average.

here it is...that Glastonbury performance in full:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tPQQLMXmQ4

[kwills]

The fight for a Hallelujah Christmas victory
X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's version of Hallelujah will be No 1 at Christmas - unless outraged Jeff Buckley fans can sabotage it
Luke Leitch
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.


Times Archive, 1985: Leonard Cohen live at Hammersmith
Cohen will survive his present renaissance and a few more besides

Background
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah: A perfect fit in words and music
How Leonard Cohen became an X Factor winner
Hallelujah for Hallelujah
Hallelujah - a song that outgrew itself

The fight for a Hallelujah Christmas victory
X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's version of Hallelujah will be No 1 at Christmas - unless outraged Jeff Buckley fans can sabotage it

Hallelujah: how Leonard Cohen became an X Factor winner without trying
X Factor's Alexandra Burke breaks Leona Lewis record
X factor winner Alexandra Burke favourite for Christmas No1
Related Links
How Leonard Cohen became an X Factor winner
X Factor's Alexandra breaks Leona's record
X Factor winner tipped for Christmas No1
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


This was an article written in The Times today,just thought that those who do not have it would be intereted in the article.It seems that Leonard is causing quite a stir nowadays!

[hydriot]

It's interesting that every cover I have heard deletes the crucial 'at' from "Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you", changing the meaning completely. Leonard never suggested you can actually hit someone who has outdrawn you! For me, to shoot futilely in the general direction of someone you know has already outdrawn you is a powerful metaphor for the desperate tiny hope that survives even the most absolute rejection of your love. Nothing of that sense comes through in the covers. In their versions, this line is totally incomprehensible.

[John Etherington]

Hi Hydriot,

That's an interesting observation. Since, I've listened to the BBC Radio programme on "Hallejujah" (via youtube) however, I'll take your word for it rather than listen to every version! One version that does include the "at" however is the original Cale cover, which perhaps adds to its superiority over all the other covers. Link for anyone who needs it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEOZLQ3d1FI

Goodnight! John E

[sebmelmoth2003]

the currant bun adopts star line of sexual exegesis.

THE lyrics of LEONARD COHEN’s original Hallelujah were inspired by, ahem, bedroom olympics...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sh ... 044627.ece

[brokenhill]

Isn't this fun???!!!

Just a few comments :
- Paula, loved your eagle-eyed spotting of consecutive Christmas songs by Leona, Leon, Leonard. Next year, Leonardo da Vinci's version of I Tried to Leave You.

for a pure sequence through Christmas 2009 It might be worth betting on a re-release of "Leonard Cohen's Day Job" by the Austin Lounge Lizards.

[sebmelmoth2003]

for a pure sequence through Christmas 2009 It might be worth betting on a re-release of "Leonard Cohen's Day Job" by the Austin Lounge Lizards

too late - i've already withdrawn my life savings from the bank and placed a complicated series of permutation bets with paddy power which, if successful, mean i will never have to work again.

[paddy power has already precipitately paid out those who bet on a white christmas - here in london the weather is warming up!!]

Hat Trick For Hallelujah?

There could yet be another twist. The original Leonard Cohen version could be number three! That would make Hallelujah occupy the first three positions in the chart. Paddy Power are offering 8/1 that this happens.

http://www.paddypower.com/bet

http://www.online-betting-guide.co.uk/n ... Spots.html

[Paula]

Seb as I was reading all this last week it did occur to me what the odds at William Hill were. Hindsight is a great thing if only I had bet even one year ago on this happening the odds would have been 1,000,000,000 to 1.

8-1 are good odds I might have a flutter when I put my Irish Lottery on

[tommylen]

Whatever we think about the commercialisation of "Halleluja"its certainly promoted Leonard Cohens ownership of it.
Ive been searching youtube for original Leonard Cohen recordings of Halleluja and this is the best one that I can find.
At least I think it is the best one around

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uX2Auw4eEcU