One of my general rule of music thumbs is that the original song is always better than the cover. Otis Redding's "Respect" is, imo, better than Ms. Franklin's, Robert Knight's "Everlasting Love" is better than the U2 cover. I'll even take Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" over the Hendrix version.
But there are two notable exceptions:
1) Goat's cover of Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down" (when I finally write about this song, I think the post will just be me staring at the screen for 45 minutes).
2) Jeff Buckley preforming Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
I was going to say, Buckley totally makes this song his own and that it's nearly perfect... but I've been beaten to the punch:
"No one has made a cover this much their own since Hendrix made people think Dylan was covering him. Buckley's voice is more haunting than on any of his own tunes. His voice soars to hit notes that Cohen couldn't quite reach, giving the song life that Cohen surely intended but couldn't achieve."
Buckley had great lyrics to work with, the opening verse alone is probably one of the best in all of music:I 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
When you're working with words like that, it's hard to mess up the song, as countless number of artists have proved. Cohen, as noted, never quite can sell me when he sings the song, but with Buckley you feel just about everything that Cohen was probably hoping to get across. The song is about making music and love... and Buckley gets this across just that little bit better than Cohen.
A beautiful song, a powerful song, one where the imagery that the lyrics gives us... of David playing for the Lord and then his later affair with Bathsheba... well it's great. And Buckley wows making this is own song, leaving us singing Hallelujah long after iTunes has moved on to the next song.
2 comments:
Virtually every cover of Hallelujah is more enjoyable to me than the original. (Bono's cover is an anomaly among the dozens of great interpretations of the song, a nearly can't miss tune. Bono tried something different.)
Huge credit due Leonard Cohen for the brilliant writing. His new take on the song, as performed at Glastonbury and elsewhere on his tour this year is especially resonant now we're familiar with so many other versions.
Jeff Buckley's Grace cover's benefited from the timing and marketing. (To some degree, the over-marketing has also hurt its long-term standing.) For almost a decade, it was JB's version or Leonard's most heard - and the choice for a mainstream audience was obvious. John Cale has always had his faithful, but, it's a smaller cult.
Today, Buckley's version doesn't land in even my top ten favorites of Hallelujah. And, as more time passes, this once dominant cover slips further. He deserves credit for choosing the song. Producer Andy Wallace masterfully constructed a single song out of the many studio takes Buckley made. John Cale gets credit for selecting the lyrics out of many verses.
Interesting take... what is your favorite cover then? I've heard about four or five and really, imo, only Rufus' comes close to Buckley's (mainly because I like Rufus' voice a bit more).
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