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I know I’m in the minority on this forum in disliking Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah. With his precious voice and his drama-queen gasps and sighs I still think he sounds like an old drag queen on a bad night.

Then again maybe I’m not the right person to judge Buckley’s cover as I don’t really like LC covers of any kind, be they good or be they bad. Although I do have a soft spot for Perla’s cover versions

However for those amongst us who think young Jeff was god’s gift here is an article from today’s Observer.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/ttre ... 06,00.html

Jeff’s Hallelujah is voted number four in the top fifty greatest covers of all time as voted by the readers of the newspaper.

Ta Ken

You may be a minority, but you are nto alone, brother!

Cohen's 1984 original is a strange beast, beautifully written but poorly executed, lumbered with the worst excesses of 1980s production values.

My friend read this portion to me over the phone today and it is what made me gasp and sigh.

I don't dislike Buckley's cover. I just prefer, MUCH prefer, Leonard's. Your depiction of Jeff's is quite fun, in fact .


~ Lizzy

Oh, it's already three of us:)

A minority voice for the majority:

I like Buckley's version......of course, the whole damned thing is so subjective, I'm not sure discussion can get much behind "I like this and I don't like that," but here it is:

I find his take harrowing (in a good way). There's an underlying desperation, of being utterly lost that just made me stop dead in my tracks the first time I heard it. Something of personal trauma seeps into his delivery, that suggests (and I'm reminded of Judy Garland in many of her greatest renditions, especially "The Man That Got Away" from the first re-make of "A Star is Born") something disturbingly authentic that just seems to well up from some place in the singer that people just don't share in polite company. It's the rawness of that underlying "place" that makes his version so compelling for me.

At the same time, I love LC's version, which in many ways stands in direct contrast to Buckley's. Leonard, as he so frequently does, sings multi-levels at once, with an ironic sense of the absurd about the whole thing (Bono makes some comment in "LC: I'm Your Man" about Leonard standing at the edge of the abyss and laughing), while conveying something both tragic and reverential at the same time.

Ultimately, I think LC's music offers a pretty large tent, which embraces a large number of variations and interpretations. Which helps, because Leonard's approach to his art guarantees we'll never stop running out of things to talk about.

Over and out. It's almost 3:00 A.M. and I must be out of my mind for still being up.

Fred

Hallelujah's magnificence shines in almost every version I've heard.

From my perspective, working in the music industry, it's fascinating to watch the evolution of media, and how a new folk tradition is being enabled. Fredric Dannen's book "Hit Men" details how major record labels, through a system of payola and control of physical distribution channels etc., effectively shut out independent artists and creativity - such that, by the 1980s/90s, access to music via the airwaves and record/CD stores was a racket controlled by a few power brokers.

As Lovin' Spoonful and jug-band music-maker, John Sebastian put it to The New York Times, "The industry has been in the corporate noose for so long, it doesn't even have a leg jiggle left."

That's changing. Thanks in large measure to the freedom of the internet, there's now a window open for artist and audience - as there was on mainstream radio before payola and corruption became so institutionalized. People today have increasing access, and opportunity to experience a much wider range of musical performances - whether or not such recordings are part of the major label system. A new artist does not have to "play the game". This makes for a great release.

Instead of limiting people to a narrow selection of choices, today's new, as yet uncontrolled, media makes it possible for people to hear any number of versions of Hallelujah or other songs being recorded and performed globally. The marketing muscle that has established the position of many recordings in the public consciousness in past decades is - at this moment in time - impotent.

Now the gates are open, Hallelujah is truly becoming a song of the people. Shrek, with its Rufus Wainwright version on the soundtrack has had a tremendous role, too, in the song's evolution, from revered cult status, into the popular canon. It's a much-loved folk song - being heard in new voices, of all ages. A poll as to people's favorites - of this, and many other songs - taken some years down the road is likely to be a very different thing should this newly democratized listening environment continue to flourish free from marketing dictates.

With respect to marketing, and, the illusions which pervade the industry - what I find most interesting about the version of Hallelujah heard on Jeff Buckley's Grace album - is how, at least until this present era, it has maintained an aura of being natural. Of course, in the practices of the recording industry, it's an artificialized naturalism. And, for many listeners, this doesn't matter. (Nor should it. We like what we like.)

After Buckley laboured to record some 20 - 30 versions of Hallelujah, a composite was created by Grammy Award-winning mixer and studio engineer Andy Wallace. To me, being inside the recording world, the end result of such a process is a studio production. On a spectrum it may be less or more heavy-handed in its sonic manipulation than a recording by any other label machine product - but, it's the same sort of animal.

And, of course, as has been said in this, and various other threads, taste is subjective. Not everyone wants to hear pure performances - without the studio tailoring. I do. To each their own.

Hallelujah enobles all who sing it. And, it's to be loved in all it permutations ( :

I love both versions. I have a deep respect for both men.

aye, there's more than enough love to cover everyone's favourites

as songwriter and poet, for Leonard Cohen's works to gain such popular currency, well, it says God is alive, magic is afoot in our culture( :