Alexandra Burke won the X-Factor, Leonard Cohen rejoices?

Oh wow! Alexandra Burke won X-factor! I was reading the BBC news website for my daily underdose of current affairs when I saw the link and I skim read the article, apparently 8 million people voted for her. I don’t know much about X-factor other than I presume she won some good loot as well as singing with her hero (Beyonce) and a ridiculous amount of publicity. All X-factor winners also receive the de facto prize of Christmas #1, for the last 3 years this has occurred and a cursory glance at Christmas #1s show that the winners of these talent shows normally get to the top spot. This is not surprising as the publicity they attain blows out of the water most other competing acts, for instance 8 million people not only sat down to watch the program but decided it was the worth their effort to vote this talent to win the competition, even if a fraction of those people go out and buy the single she has got the place.

I was just about to launch into a mini attack of programs like X-factor and then I paused and realised that would be uncalled for, this Alexandra seems to have impressed some sort of judging panel and 8 million people, her releases will not affect me and I probably won’t even realise I’m listening to her, so good for her.

However, Alexandra Burke’s debut single (and therefore #1 within a fortnight) is going to be Hallelujah. Leonard Cohen released Hallelujah in 1984, since then it has been recorded for release around 170 times, notably by Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley, the latter’s version has been described as close to perfection any song can achieve apparently, I disagree. Buckley sounds like he is whinging and preaching way too much in it – I don’t think that’s the point of the song there Jeff. I am well aware Leonard Cohen might not be to everyone’s taste, and the original could, if you were malicious, be described as a monotone droning of a poem set to music. I would say it is more a poem than a song in the original but its still pretty good, I guess it depends which version you hear first and what you expect from it. Which bring me to the thing I’m dreading and will be annoyed by in the coming weeks. Hallelujah is an excellent song, but sometimes people get confused as to who wrote it first, I’m hoping it’s fairly obvious to Miss Burke’s fan base that she isn’t singing it for the first time, but more importantly (to me anyway) is that they are well informed and don’t credit Buckley. I really don’t care how much his cover is loved, I get a little twitchy when people believe he wrote it, and no kiddiwinks, Leonard Cohen did not go back in time to cover it.

I guess it’s just a pet hate, and I don’t like it when I don’t realise a song I thought was the original is in fact a cover, for several months I thought Peter, Bjorn and John’s Young Folks was a Japanese song (I was in Japan at the time and Shugo Tokumaru was being played a lot, I am also fairly certain but blatantly mistaken that there is a version sung in Japanese…).
I agree the original Hallelujah may not be the best version, but credit where credit’s due. For the record my personal favourite cover is the Rufus Wainwright version, it’s one of the few songs of his I like. I guess Cohen himself is pretty pleased with it, it’s like the UK are giving him one big Christmas present, of royalties.

Lastly, what an odd song to be Christmas #1, it’s not very cheery or Christmasy…

Filed under: Articles, News, Alexandra Burke, Christmas #1, Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, X-Factor