Alexandra Burke's X Factor single Hallelujah is fastest-selling download
Hallelujah, simply, is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. It has been covered with increasing frequency (Bon Jovi, for example, included it in their concerts last year). The covers tend, unfortunately, if predictably, to follow the John Cale cover rather then Leonard Cohen's original.
Unfortunately, because the original was perfect, and perfectly Cohen. To title a song Hallelujah is label it as overtly religious. The religious imagery in the lyrics strengthens that association. At the same time the Cohen's lyrics are unabashedly sacrilegious. Cohen's gravelly, earthy voice singing, without artifice, the verses grounds them very much in-this-world. He is, to be sure, tired and jaded, but frankly, or stoic-ly, so. The chorus, backed by the choir, hearkens back to the more traditional (for example, Handel's) Hallelujah. But if the more traditional Hallelujah is a celebration of simple transcendental faith, Cohen's chorus reaches for something to replace that faith irretrievably lost. It finds the traces of that possibility in the choir. The singer in the verse is hauntingly isolated, in the chorus he sings-together, almost hand-in-hand.
Given the parelels, it was a great song to include in the Shrek -- which was a fairy tale for people too grown up or cynically post-modern to believe in fairy tales -- soundtrack.
The covers, starting with Cale's version, tend to lose both Cohen's grounded verses, and singing-together chorus. The song becomes an simple excuse for mournful, soulful, spiritual vocal gymnastics. At its best it contains shades of the troubled complexity of the original, at its worst (see: Wainright, Rufus), it become a whiny trainwreck.
To give Ms Burke some credit, her version better then most, reaches back to the spirit of Cohen's original. She opens the song with the mournful, soulful, spiritual vocal gymnastics that mark, or rather: mar, the Cale inspired covers, but she ends it with an almost frankly religious, choir backed, singing-together. It is more simplistically a song of faith lost and found then the original, but that is not a critisism.
I think damian's got the best (damian rice):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEKCsSlK3jg
also, this guy (alter bridge) -- incandescent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgTBDRCGjKU
ok I see what you're saying, about how cohen's version is a 'sacreligious' reputidation of our usual notions about faith, and a search for something deeper or higher or more authentic, but I don't think you can, out of hand, discount all those other versions that don't do it in the way cohen (or alexandra burke) does it.
ReplyDeletetake, for example, the enormously popular version that kurt nilsen does, in that style you call 'mournful, soulful' vocal gymnastics. listen to how nilsen emphasizes the doubt about the hallelujah, just as (and in the same place as) burke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NEU6Xf7lM
and who can listen to damian rice's version and not get that he's got the same intentions as cohen, only he's doing it from a more inner, private place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEKCsSlK3jg
I think what's happening here is not that people aren't respecting cohen's original, but that they're going about expressing cohen's original in different musical terms, with a different musical vocabulary. which is ok. you can't expect people listening to music today to have the same modes of music to express the same things they did 40 years ago.
take for example, that famous broadway song from evita, 'don't cry for me argentina'. now, the original (and usual) version of this song is to do it like an anthem, a very public declaration. like madonna's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m4gZ0gM4Js
or the way elaine paige immortalized it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ue_mCwTpSU
but there are other ways to do this song, other things about this song to express. like this incredible version by sinead oconnor, which uncovers something very private, psychological and introverted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2shR99NnwCA
I think what's happening here is not that people aren't respecting cohen's original, but that they're going about expressing cohen's original in different musical terms, with a different musical vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is an element of common expression amoungst the better covers and the original. Or, perhaps, they merely borrow the concept of a secular (or "broken") Hallelujah.
On the other hand, I do think the differences described in the post (in particular the almost-cyncism and the singing-together) are intrinsic to Cohen's message.
It may be true -- and I alluded to it at the end of the post -- that Cohen's message is outdated, and that the new versions reflect a more contemporary expression on the same idea.
If so, the original still speaks most naturally to me. I am too natively cynical to appreciate performers apparently competing over how beautifully earnest they can sing.