How to not like Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Hallelujah’

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Even at the grand old age of 27, I still slip the occasional up and find my feet planted almost firmly almost inside the circle of being vaguely aware of what’s become of pop culture.  This Christmas, this has happened in a roundabout way though, of all people, Leonard Cohen.  It happened because of Leonard Cohen’s song, one of the most covered songs of all, ‘Hallelujah’.

The strangest thing of all about ‘Hallelujah’ isn’t that so many people have covered it but that the original certainly isn’t the best.  Everyone knows and accepts without question that in at least 90% of cases of cover versions, the original is the best.  This is not so much because all cover versions are bad, as because for a song to be deemed cover-worthy (coverable? un-coverable?) in the first place it needs a certain inimitable quality that dooms the very idea of a cover version to failure before it’s even been recorded.  But nothing makes money in pop culture like a good old-fashioned sub-textual paradox: hence, cover versions exist. 

Some obvious, mainstream examples of cover versions that are superior to the originals include: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ version of Bob Dylan’s “Death is not the End” (for its inspired use of multiple vocalists and the infusion of a hideously sardonic sing-a-long quality); Radiohead’s version of Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better” (for its shameless acceptance of, and reveling in, the fact that the song is really all about violent, chauvinistic sex); and Morrissey’s version of Paul Weller’s “That’s Entertainment” (for its being by Morrissey/not by Paul Weller).  The problem is with “Hallelujah” that Leonard Cohen’s version – “the original” – just isn’t very good.  It’s unmistakably and undeniably a wonderful song – even by Leonard Cohen’s standards – but it’s hard to listen to the actual recording without the sinking, stinking feeling there’s something not quite right.  What’s not quite right is, I think, that “Hallelujah” in its original version, is a cover version of itself.

For most people, this doesn’t seem to be a problem: the sins of Leonard Cohen’s rendition have been atoned for by Jeff Buckley’s “definitive”, “haunting”, “transcendent” (et cetera, et cetera) version, uncovered once again by the winner of this year’s pop suicide pub karaoke contest (“The X-Factor”), who to nobody’s surprise has made it 2008’s Christmas Number One (TM).  I haven’t heard it, and no soon as I had googled it I forgot the name of the woman who sings it; but it goes without saying that it’s unfathomably dreadful.  Hence the predictable battle between that version and the “real” version by Jeff Buckley, re-released and by the power of the democratic process (i.e. facebook) raised all the way to the Christmas Number Two.  For those same people who hold Jeff Buckley in high esteem as some sort of paradigm of authenticity (being prematurely dead helps immensely, of course, in this regard; cf. John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Marc Bolan, Jeff Buckley himself, and – naturally – Jeff Buckley’s dad), this tells you everything you need to know.  “Manufactured” pop music has triumphed over “real” pop music, the end is nigh, kids today wouldn’t know good music if it stabbed them in the lunch queue, blah blah and blah.

I’d like to suggest an alternative view: that all this actually doesn’t tell you anything you need to know.  This is for one simple reason: Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” is crap too.  No, it is.  Really.  I’m not joking.  Don’t kick me in the face.  I know it seems like a great version of a great song but listen closely and you’ll find it’s just pretending to be.  Soulful, pure and transcendent it may sound at first listen but that’s really all just surface.  Jeff Buckley doesn’t actually seem to have much of an idea what “Hallelujah” is about.  This isn’t his fault: I don’t think anybody does.  I certainly don’t.  Perhaps Leonard – a poet, after all – doesn’t really know either, though obviously he knows a lot more than Jeff, as evidenced by the fact his own version isn’t particularly good, even despite being very clearly aware of how great the song is – which is, when you think about it, a soulful, pure and transcendent achievement in its own right.  I’m thinking Leonard Cohen realised that “Hallelujah” was somehow too good, and being the peaceful soul that he is, just couldn’t bring himself not to record it at all and thereby consign it to the unwelcome gold dust mine of pop music mythology, so instead had to record a deliberately rubbish version just to confuse everyone.  Nothing is more peaceful than confusion, you know (I’ll explain another time, maybe).

So it is that there just aren’t any good versions of “Hallelujah”.  What an ugly, fickle bitch pop music is.  Not that I’d have it any other way.  It’s just that words like this:

“I’ve heard there was a secret chord,

that David played and it pleased the Lord

but you don’t really care for music do you?

Well it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth,

the minor fall and the major lift,

the baffled King composing ‘Hallelujah’”.

The Baffled King: Now there’s the title of a Leonard Cohen album if ever there was one.  Leonard Cohen, the baffled king, composing “Hallelujah”.  But lyrics like these not only don’t really belong in a pop song, and not only don’t belong in the Old Testament from whence they came, they don’t really belong anywhere.  This has something to do with how the first verse of the song tells you how to play the song you’re already playing (the fourth – F; the fifth – G; the minor fall – A minor; the major lift – F) – how it tells you to cover it, so as to uncover it, so as to uncover that there’s nothing there, or that there’s something there but you can’t really tell the difference, and that this has more than a little to do with the mystery of God and of life itself, and there I really have to stop before I run out of ways to be pretentious…and start to sound more than a little bit like silly young Jeff Buckley.

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