Favorite version of Hallelujah

Of course original is almost always the preferred version but I think Jeff Buckley did really tremendous cover-version of it, completely his own.
I think I like it the most.

@pdenny that's completely different song by the way.

 

Cohen yes...this video version is amazing.



and we all must listen to his Various Positions LP that it appeared on...possibly my favorite.

Leonard Cohen - Dance Me To The End Of Love - with LYRICS »

 

Audiences here in Ireland killed this song for me. I went to all 16 shows in Ireland (and a few in the UK) since LC returned to playing live in 2008. The reaction was always overblown (to put it mildly - like some kind of religious experience). The shows were great but I dreaded the introduction of "Hallelujah".

 

Cale for me, he has all the emotion.

 

JC and LC.

 

I like this one.... won the Eurovision song contest in 1979....

 

KD by a mile.

 

Some years ago, I broadcast a 3 hour FM radio show, totally uninterrupted for even a station ID, of versions of Cohen's Hallelujah, including some variants by the same artist. When you explore the diversity of interpretations, it makes the song become a grand symphony of so many deep feelings, not to mention the wide range of musical arrangements. It even adds to - and makes more profound - the versions that may not be listed as your "favorite". All of them magnify each other. You may be exhausted emotionally after 5 or 6 versions, imagine how you would be mesmerized by three hours of versions (and maybe follow them with many more that would not fit). There are probably 50 newer versions recorded since I did that broadcast.

Some used the original lyric, some used the revised lyric.

The audience went nuts for that 3 hour broadcast.

 

It's interesting the way the song has moved into the mainstream. Cohen's version is bleak and undertstated, with a cheap sounding synth. It needed Cale to change the lyrics, and the arrangement. Once that was done, it could then be a vehicle for overwrought hideous caterwauling.
Which it duly became.
It is still too intelligent to be a true song for the masses, but most of the big versions seem to go against the grain of at least some of the lyrics. The title is the main reason it has become a squawker's paradise.

 

Choen's original version. No cover comes close to it!

 

Cale's.

 

I think kd's version is perfection, while I find Buckley's sorely overrated. I also like Rufus' version and Renee Fleming's version.

 

I've been really knocked out by Pentatonix's acappella recording of the song, released only several weeks ago on their new Christmas album.

 

Leonard Cohen himself changed and revised the lyrics

 

Jeff Buckley's is my favorite.

 

Leonard does two versions that I like: the live version from Cohen Live, and the Various Positions version.

I like the idea that he had two versions with differing lyrics.

 

The version everyone covers is Cale's.

 

Sick of Jeff. I'm a kd fan big time
Cale is a close second.
Anyone who doesn't have that LC tribute cd needs to buy it NOW.

 

Leonard, Jeff and John. And I prefer live versions.


I can't stand k.d. lang, I've tried.


I have Alan Light's book The Holy or the Broken. There are so many awful Hallelujahs. It's funny that people always say this song makes them cry or use it as funeral song. It's about sex.

There is also BBC radio program The Fourth the Fifth the Minor Fall...

 

I think any of the well known cover versions kills Cohen's original on Various Positions. He had a hard time with the song, and I don't think he quite got it right with Various Positions (and the arrangement is lousy). John Cale gets credit for getting to the essence of what has become a standard.

Wait, I take that back about any of the well known cover versions being better. Any of the well known cover versions EXCEPT for Bono's cover, which likely will never been exceeded on the utter s**t scale. Even Bono has, at this point, disowned it.

 

Here's an excellent live version from Cohen - new verses but virtually the same arrangement, just without that echo, synth, processing, etc. A LOT better IMO. Just goes to show you how much of a difference producing can make (negatively, that is).

 

Halleluwah you said?

CAN!

 

Still beats Bon Jovi.