by Alan Light
Their “Hallelujah” reached Number One on the country’s singles chart, going ten times platinum in two weeks and eventually selling more than 250,000 copies (twenty-five times platinum). The song stayed in the Norwegian Top 20 for thirty-seven weeks, and gave its title to the foursome’s Hallelujah Live album, which also went to Number One. Incredibly, the video for their pleasant, only occasionally overwrought “Hallelujah” has been watched on YouTube almost exactly the same number of times as all of the Jeff Buckley clips combined—a staggering fifty million views.
• • •
As the tenth anniversary of Buckley’s death approached, his following seemed to keep growing every year, and to become more formalized. In 2007, there were tribute events held around the world—in Australia, Iceland, France, Macedonia, and many more countries. (Currently, there are two ongoing, annual Jeff Buckley tribute events: Chicago’s twoday event at Uncommon Ground and a yearly New York City tribute called “An Evening with Jeff Buckley.”)
Incredibly, Buckley’s own thirteen-year-old recording of “Hallelujah,” which had never been released as a single, began to show up on European pop charts itself. In 2006, on the heels of the Lind/Nilsen/Fuentes/Holm hit, it went to Number Seven in Norway, meaning that the song reached the Top Ten in two different versions in one year. The next year, it hit Number Five in Sweden.
During the week of March 15, 2008, “Hallelujah” was the single most downloaded song in France. Eleven years after his death, Jeff Buckley had his first Number One hit.
CHAPTER TEN
For the next phase of “Hallelujah”-mania, once again, Northern Europe got there early. In 2007, Amanda Jenssen sang “Hallelujah” in the semifinals of the Swedish edition of Idol. She eventually lost the championship vote by a few percentage points, but her version of the song became an online hit, and when her debut album was released, it went to Number One.
This performance was a harbinger of things to come. The year 2008 would prove to be yet another landmark in the journey of “Hallelujah,” this time through a different kind of usage on television. It was the year in which the singing competitions discovered the song and, yet again, propelled it to new levels of visibility and popularity.
In the U.S., Jason Castro performed the song during the round of sixteen on American Idol, which was devoted to songs from the 1980s. (Its inclusion may have been a surprise to any of the viewers who knew it only through Buckley’s 1994 recording.) The dreadlocked Colombian-American singer gave a simple performance, almost shockingly clean amid the overwrought melismas of most Idol singers. He gave an especially nice vocal wink on the “you don’t really care for music, do ya?” line. Though Castro played guitar, and even ukulele, on other episodes of the show, this time he sang with no instrument in his hands.
It’s kind of alarming to go back and watch single-song clips from Idol in isolation, and realize just how brief these performances are. Castro sings for barely ninety seconds, enough to get through the song’s first verse and the “marble arch” verse. It’s quite a tribute to the resilience of this lyric—this edit removes virtually all of the spirituality and every bit of the sexuality of Cohen’s words, leaving just a vague sense of romantic yearning. In Castro’s “Hallelujah,” the central line becomes “love is not a victory march,” which is a strong idea but not the song’s usual focal point.
Still, he used his time well and, whatever the limitations, he made an impression; judge Randy Jackson registered his fondness for the Cohen and Buckley recordings, and said that following them was “a tall order, because they really did it, they worked it out.” Idol majordomo Simon Cowell, who would become a key figure in the progress of “Hallelujah,” called Castro’s performance “absolutely brilliant.”
It left its mark with the public as well. Later, MTV.com proclaimed Castro’s “Hallelujah” to be “one of the best Idol performances of all time.” Castro would eventually finish fourth in that year’s contest, and he included a recording of “Hallelujah” on his 2010 debut album, which reached the Top 20.
More surprising, though, was that immediately following Castro’s performance, Buckley’s recording of the song skyrocketed on iTunes. His “Hallelujah” sold 178,000 digital downloads in the week following Castro’s performance—the highest boost in sales a song had ever received from an Idol cover—to debut at Number One on Billboard’s “Hot Digital Songs” chart. It was the first time Buckley’s version of the song reached any Billboard chart, as well as his first-ever U.S. Number One. Within a matter of weeks, the single was certified gold, and then platinum.
Later in the year, Simon Cowell would make good on the fact that he had called “Hallelujah” (specifying the Buckley recording) “one of [his] favorite songs of all time” when a twenty-year-old R&B singer named Alexandra Burke reached the finals of the 2008 edition of The X Factor in England. After Cowell and the show’s producers told her that the song she would be singing in the final would be “Hallelujah,” Burke said that, initially, she was “gutted.”
“I thought, ‘Cor, I’ve lost already, I’m never gonna do a justifiable version of that song,’ ” said Burke a few years later, on the phone from London. “My mum has been in the business for a long time, and when I was told that was the song chosen, I called her and said, ‘I’m not going to win, that song is never going to suit me.’ But my mum said, ‘Calm down, listen to the song, and call me back.’
“I grew up listening to Motown and soul records, and I realized that there were all these different versions of ‘Hallelujah,’ but there wasn’t a soulful one, and maybe that was my way to put my own spin on it. I called my mum back and told her that I was going to Whitney-fy it, really make it soulful, and she burst into tears on the phone.”
Still, Burke had questions. She heard the different verses used in the different recordings, and she said that she asked the producers, “Hang on, which version are we doing?” Maybe because it was the final round, a little more time could be given over to the actual music, so she was presented with an edit that had three verses—in addition to the first and last of the Buckley version, she also sang the “She tied you to a kitchen chair” verse (which also perhaps displayed a bit more confidence in the sophistication of European, as opposed to American, viewers).
“When they picked the verses, the whole meaning came clear to me,” said Burke. “I had asked my mum, ‘Explain to me what the song means.’ And she said, ‘Yes, it’s dark, but people take in their own kind of meaning, and it’s also loving.’ The ‘maybe there’s a God above’ verse, that’s my favorite. That boils down to my religion, which for me is really the whole meaning.”
No doubt, Burke’s “Hallelujah” is a powerhouse. On her X Factor performance and then on the subsequent studio recording, the first two verses come relatively straight, with little embellishment against a simple arrangement. But there’s definitely a sense of calm before the storm. After the second chorus, there’s a brief instrumental break, and then Burke explodes into the final verse—on the show, you can see the audience starting to go wild—backed by a gospel choir. It is, in fact, reminiscent of dramatic Whitney Houston ballads like “I Will Always Love You,” in which Houston famously built in a brief pause before the roof-raising climax.
Burke digs into that final verse, delivering “Hallelujah” as salvation. “It’s not a cry that you hear at night / it’s not someone who’s seen the light”—hers is a hallelujah that is open to all, a reward for faith rather than a resigned surrender. Ironically, in some ways it was a return to the spirit of celebration that was intended, but came to be so easily overlooked, in the Various Positions version.
Burke might not offer all of the meanings that Cohen wrote into these words, but she sings with a clear sense of purpose and a passionate drive. Her take may flatten out the poetry, but it’s damn near irresistible.
The reaction from the public was staggering. More than eight million votes were cast by UK viewers, and Burke was crowned X Factor champion. “Hall
elujah” was instantly released as the “winner’s single.” The song, offering a spirit of joy and uplift in time for the holiday season, became the all-time European record holder for single sales over a period of twenty-four hours, selling 105,000 copies in one day on its way to becoming the top-selling song of the year in the UK. By January 2009, sales of Burke’s “Hallelujah” had passed one million copies, which made her the first British female solo artist to reach that milestone.
There is an odd tradition in the UK of making a very big deal out of which song is the country’s Number One hit on Christmas Day. In recent years, there have been campaigns to whip up support for old Rage Against the Machine songs and even John Cage’s silent 4’33” in a bid for them to come in as the Christmas Number One.
When Jeff Buckley fans, upset by the commercial delivery and slick production of Burke’s “Hallelujah,” saw the instant popularity and rocket-fueled sales of the record, they responded with a campaign to promote Buckley’s version on the Christmas charts. In the end, Buckley’s single rose all the way to Number Two—though almost a half a million copies behind Burke—while, for good measure, Leonard Cohen’s 1984 original came in at Number 36.
It marked the first time in more than forty years that the same composition held the top two spots on the singles chart. Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company, noted that the positions were “remarkable for a twenty-five-year-old song which has never previously reached the Top 40.”
The fact that the popularity of “Hallelujah” was reaching new heights in the aftermath of exposure on a televised singing contest may have been improbable, but at least it was understandable. (It was also sung on Canadian Idol and recorded, in another hit version, by the Dutch X Factor champion.) More incredible, though, was the way in which this resurgence continued after these phenomena had died down, and the ripples continued to be felt around the world.
In such countries as Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland, Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” reached the singles charts separate times in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2009, the Buckley track was ranked number three on the Australian radio station Triple J’s “Hottest 1001 of All Time,” a listener poll held every decade.
On yet another end of the musical spectrum, Simon Cowell found a different outlet for the song with his multinational “operatic pop” group Il Divo. In late 2008, the quartet—composed of singers from France, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.S.—included “Hallelujah” on its fourth album, The Promise. Where the song provided a showstopping moment for most of the singer-songwriters, solo vocalists, and rock bands who performed it, for this bravura set of voices, it marked a new level of subtlety.
According to Il Divo’s David Miller, his fellow group member Sebastien Izambard had been advocating for “Hallelujah” for a while, but it took the song’s success on Idol and X Factor to convince mentor Cowell to let them try it. Tellingly, Miller noted that it was one of the rare songs that all four of the singers were already familiar with: “We come from radically different countries, so if we all know a song, then probably everyone knows it.”
They translated the lyrics into Spanish, taking some liberties with the words, and constructed an arrangement that Miller calls “delicate and intimate,” in contrast to their usual grand presentations and big finishes. “When we listened back, we knew it was something special, unlike anything we’d ever done,” he said—so much so that it was a challenge to find the right place for “Hallelujah” in Il Divo’s live set. “It always has an impact with the audience, but it can be difficult to program it,” he said. “After a huge song, it can almost be jarring for us to go so quiet, or it might be too much of a lullaby after too many quiet songs.”
Regardless, it connected with Il Divo’s listeners just as it had with so many others. The Promise went to Number One in the UK and Number Five in the U.S. “That word hallelujah means something to everyone,” said Miller. “The release of joy in that word, everyone has experienced that at some point.”
Even before Il Divo’s recording, numerous vocal groups had been giving the song a more formal, traditional arrangement—and so, in addition to infiltrating the poppunk world, the song was now a regular part of the light classical repertoire. Every set of National Tenors or opera-trained crooners seemed to perform “Hallelujah,” and it had also become a staple for college a cappella groups and glee clubs.
It’s rare but not unprecedented to see a song return to public awareness years after its day has passed, often owing to use on a soundtrack (think of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and its resurgence after the Wayne’s World movie). It’s quite possible, though, that no song has ever scaled those heights after such a long time, and then done it again and again, with little sense of either nostalgia or novelty, and somehow still managed to feel at once so familiar and so fresh.
• • •
At the end of 2007, Leonard Cohen was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This was followed, a few weeks later, by the singer’s own bit of news—like an old trouper, Cohen announced in January of 2008 that he would be touring, getting back on the boards after fifteen years away. He made no secret of the fact that the tour was primarily motivated by financial reasons, an attempt to struggle back to security following the Lynch disaster.
At the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on March 10, Lou Reed introduced Cohen. He recalled the two of them meeting in the ’60s at the Chelsea Hotel and at the nightclub Max’s Kansas City. He compared Cohen’s Beautiful Losers to the writings of William F. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Hubert Selby. “We’re so lucky to be alive at the same time Leonard Cohen is,” said the notoriously acerbic Reed.
Cohen’s brief speech was followed by the young Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice performing, inevitably, a solo and very Buckley-ish “Hallelujah.” It is probable that very few people noticed that this particular set of lyrics was not one that Cohen had ever sung himself.
The next day, the first leg of the tour was announced. The trek began on May 11 at the 709-seat Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and ran for eighty-five dates, concluding at England’s twenty-thousand-capacity Manchester Arena. There was no way of knowing that demand would run so high for these shows that the tour would continue, relatively uninterrupted other than the first half of 2010, for more than two and a half years. In the end, Cohen played almost 250 dates around the world—mostly marathon, almost three-hour sets—from Australia to Israel to the Czech Republic, to rapturous reviews; one New Zealand critic said simply, “This was the best show I have ever seen.”
Skipping on and off the stage; tipping his fedora in deference to the musicians when they took a solo; grinning in admiration as his backup singers, the Webb Sisters, turned a unison cartwheel mid-show, Cohen was a radiant presence in these concerts. Though it had been a few years since he said that his depression had lifted, the Prince of Bummers now truly presented a paternal, grateful demeanor. Given the functional motivation for the tour, it could have been something genuinely pathetic. Instead, as Cohen returned for encore after encore each night, it was proving to be his long-overdue victory lap.
One indication of the phenomenon that was developing around the tour came at England’s Glastonbury Festival in June. The big controversy around the event this time was the fact that Jay-Z was the headliner, the first time a hiphop artist was given that coveted slot. Noel Gallagher from Oasis expressed his disapproval, to which Jay-Z responded by opening his set with a cover of the band’s “Wonderwall,” ending with him smashing a guitar. But one of the most memorable performances came from Cohen on the festival’s closing night.
“Veteran singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen inspired a Glastonbury ‘moment’ when he played his legendary song ‘Hallelujah’ during his Pyramid Stage slot at Glastonbury tonight,” wrote NME.com. “The star started the song just as the sun was setting, and further delighted the massive crowd when he changed the lyric ‘I told the truth, I didn’t come here to fool ya’ to ‘I told the truth,
I didn’t come to Glastonbury to fool ya.’ The crowd sang every chorus with Cohen, and gave him a massive ovation at the end.”
Glastonbury’s official website singled out the performance in its recap of the 2008 festival. “Leonard Cohen stole the entire weekend in dapper style, leading the crowd in an astonishing chorus of ‘Hallelujah,’ and performing a taut set of his greatest hits as the sun went down on the Festival’s final day.”
A few weeks after Glastonbury, Cohen’s performance at the sold-out O2 Arena was filmed for the Live in London DVD and double-CD set. In the ever-shifting world of dwindling record sales, the album was Cohen’s highest-charting in the U.S. since 1969, and, in a now-familiar pattern, hit the Top Ten in various European nations. Entertainment Weekly wrote that the set was “a reminder that Cohen is as gifted a performer as he is a songwriter.”
As documented on the DVD, “Hallelujah” had settled into a standardized, fail-safe arrangement, complete with organ solo by Neil Larsen and, as noted above, the insertion of the host city into the “I didn’t come to fool you” line. Cohen was now more carefully enunciating “you,” rather than “ya,” in every verse (a modification that Rufus Wainwright suspects he might have inspired). The line most people know (from covers starting with Cale’s and Buckley’s) as “it’s not somebody who’s seen the light” has evolved in Cohen’s performances into the more precise, more skeptical “it’s not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the light.”
Keeping in mind that these were Cohen’s first performances of the song since the “Hallelujah” explosion, it’s important that his own rendition still crescendoed with the “I’ll stand before the Lord of Song / with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!” verse—lines that were unknown to fans who came to the song through Jeff Buckley, whose version concluded with the “all I ever learned from love / is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you” verse. Indeed, the tour program, which included excerpts from the lyrics to some of Cohen’s best-known songs, contained the first verse and the two final verses of the original text. Whether this was intended to differentiate Cohen’s song from Buckley’s cover, or simply to emphasize his own priorities in the lyrics, the statement was significant.