Interpreting | 2008.12.26
Mark Lawson: Warring Hallelujahs for the top of the charts
This year, in the wave of coverage that marked Leonard Cohen\'s return to touring after 15 years, many reviewers wrote that the Canadian singer-songwriter had "taken back" his song Hallelujah from the 170 cover versions. But, just a few months later, a second rush of coverage makes clear that the recovery of his composition has failed. This Christmas, Hallelujah may achieve the unprecedented feat of being No 1 and 2 in the charts, in versions by Alexandra Burke, the X Factor winner, and Jeff Buckley.
This is partly an audience revolt against television power. Phone-in viewers of X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing voted against the judges\' choices; now, another group is using downloading technology to annoy Simon Cowell by outselling, with the same song, television\'s latest creation.
But the fight between two Hallelujahs is fitting because the song has led a double life. Even Cohen released, in effect, a cover version. His 1984 original combines a conflation of the biblical stories of David, Delilah and Samson with a string of comically ingenious rhymes for the title word, including "overthrew yah" and "what\'s it to yah". Four years later, Cohen performed and published a different lyric, which becomes an end-of-love letter to a departed partner.
The X Factor has been criticised for the songs it selects for contestants but, even given this history, Hallelujah was an odd final challenge for a 16-year-old boy, Eoghan Quigg, and a young woman. Although there have been female versions, the song, especially in its later version, is the bitter sexual lament of a middle-aged man who finds himself locked out of the body of a woman. ("There was a time you let me know / What\'s really going on below / But now you never show it to me, do yah?")
So all such lines have been clipped from the version that Burke sings. But, as well as being made less sexual, her rendition is also strangely more violent.
In one of the stanzas Cohen added later, the rejected man reflects that "all I ever learned from love / is how to shoot at someone you who outdrew you". This has always seemed a typically comic Cohen image: in some Dodge City of the heart, the lover crouches behind a rock, trying to fire off replies to the romantic sharp-shooter who has brought them down. Burke, though, sings that the lesson she\'s taken from relationships is "how to shoot somebody who outdrew you". In this bedroom High Noon, the underdog has killed their nemesis.
Because Cohen has a reputation for gloominess, and Buckley died young, the song has become connected with depression, but the lyrics support this: the use of the religious exultation is first erotic, then ironic. Burke, though, gives it the gusto of a gospel choir. So a song about a failed relationship and the impossibility of finding consolation has become an anthem of triumph over the odds on a talent show. This shouldn\'t be surprising. One reason a song achieves a long life is its ambiguity and adaptability.
On at least one level, Cohen would appreciate the Burke version. One of his album titles refers to himself as a ladies\' man, a reference backed up by his biography; he would enjoy the thought of his words being mouthed by a beautiful woman. But, once again in his career, he is going to have to try to take back his most famous song.
Next year, there should be a CD and DVD of Cohen\'s remarkable recent concerts. On stage, he sang both the sacred and profane verses of Hallelujah as if he had lived and understood every word, not something likely to be said of Burke\'s interpretation, which sounds like a technically accomplished singer sight-reading in a karoake bar. In a sensible musical universe, Cohen\'s live 2008 rendition would give the song another No 1. But, as X Factor proves, we do not live in a rational galaxy but on Planet Cowell.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]mment-hallelujah-leonard-cohen
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