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July 20, 2006
There's Hallelujah All Over the Place
Yesterday the temperature dipped to the mid 70’s and I decided to walk home from work. As I crossed the street into the Public Gardens, I heard a familiar tune drifting across the lawns. I avoided the bridge, which is always crowded with tourists taking charming photos (the bridge really is very charming), and got a better look at the performer. By now I could hear perfectly well that this fellow was engaging in a public massacre of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I should actually say Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” because he was really going for that. He had his guitar hooked up to a little amp, and this atrocity followed me all the way through the Gardens. To be honest, once the sound became indistinct and distorted by the water and the trees, it was quite nice. And I wondered if maybe I could pluck out the chords on my guitar at home.
This line of thought led me to consider the peculiar phenomenon of the song that has caused so many artists to attempt it. Cohen’s album “Various Positions” came out in 1984, and the the original is drastically different from most of the remakes. He growls out the lyrics suggestively and a choir kicks in to sing the hallelujahs. There’s no minimalist guitar or meandering piano. It actually seems like something Pink Floyd might have put out. John Cale did a cover for the tribute album “I’m Your Fan” in 1991 and his version was featured on Scrubs recently. I love it, personally. When Jeff Buckley goes for it in 1994 on “Grace,” he’s way more Cale than Cohen. Then we have the tragically inappropriately used Rufus Wainwright 2001 version in Shrek – one thing that particularly bugs me about his is that he says “do you” all enunciated instead of the casual “do ya.” K. D. Lang does it well on her 2004 album “Hymns of the 49th Parallel” by opening with a piano and gently incorporating strings. It’s very rich and lovely. Last on my list of notables (because there are so many remakes! Anthony Michael Hall redid this thing!), is Imogen Heap. When a main character died on the season finale of The O.C and this a capella version kicked in, I laughed my ass off. Even without accompaniment – maybe because of that – it smacked of excess, and it kind of made me not like Ms. Heap. For a more thorough list and to listen to the remakes, you should check out this blog. It’s pretty awesome.
This song is fantastic, but we have been utterly bombarded with it lately – take a look. There are artists all over the place writing beautiful and melancholy tunes. Surely the myriad peons involved in movie and television could find something else that would just as effectively accentuate a moment of fictitious sadness.
Nevertheless, I can pretty much guarantee I’ll learn how to play this song (with no public display intentions). There’s something very appealing about singing sad, pretty songs that I can’t resist. For example, I’ve started trying to replicate Anders Parker’s “You Keep Me Hanging On” even though it’s a duet and those harmonies are half of what create the wistfulness of the tune. But it doesn’t matter because how great is it to make your voice break just so when singing the line “You were always a heartbeat away”? It’s really great. Even the hair bands back in the day made their sappy, soaring power ballads that are the musical equivalent of raising your hands and face to the sky – the stormy sky - and dramatically crying out.
“Hallelujah” is a chain smoking alone with the lights off, drinking wine out of the bottle sad song. I wish I could create something that evokes so much emotional depth. Maybe so many artists try their hands at this song because they feel that way, too.
| By heidi | 12:11 PM