Hey, remember that song from Shrek?*

This is an interesting (and at times, wayward) analysis of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” and its apparent rise in popularity after it was “simplified and saddened” by John Cale and later Jeff Buckley.

Let me take you back to the long-ago time of mid-February, 2007. Popular emo band Fall Out Boy had the number one album in the country and, being a responsible music critic, I of course illegally downloaded it. As my train crossed the Manhattan Bridge, I reached track five on the album. And I heard this:

What they’re singing there, aside from what I believe professionals call “twaddle,” is the chorus of a Leonard Cohen song. This is mildly incredible. Twenty-five years ago, a character on the TV show The Young Ones named Neal–the hippie–said, “I’m beginning to feel like a Leonard Cohen record, cause nobody ever listens to me.” Today, in contrast, one particular Leonard Cohen song is featured prominently in no less than three separate episodes of teen uberdrama The OC, and can be heard in at least twenty-four separate movies and TV episodes, almost always as the soundtrack to a montage of people being sad.

What I hope to show today is how, exactly, that happened to a song called “Hallelujah.”

What’s now considered the definitive version of this song is by dreamy, dead troubadour Jeff Buckley. (Some people are even under the impression that Buckley’s cover is the original version.)

It’s an almost unbearably sad song in this incarnation—slow, keening, and heartbroken. But originally it was something different.

This is more like your uncle’s band playing in a warehouse, assuming your uncle was weird and labored under the impression that he was a crooner. It passed into the public realm almost unnoticed, and remained that way for some time; in the major Cohen biography, published in 1996, there’s no entry for the song in the index, despite the fact that the book’s name is the same as the album on which “Hallelujah” originally appears.

The article is pretty interesting and also contains clips/samples of numerous artists’ versions of the song.

If you have any love for the song and don’t want to hear the worst version that I could find then do not click on the video below*.

Since I’m on the subject of this song, I should point out that while I used to really like it I’ve overplayed it enough now that I absolutely loathe playing it and won’t, ever again. You’re welcome, Leonard… there’s now one less idiot doing a shit cover of your song.

* Sorry, but I couldn’t resist starting this post that way.

** I confess that I like Bon Jovi and that this isn’t the worst version of Hallelujah that I’ve ever heard (I have performances of myself playing it y’know?), but omfg Bon Jovi’s whispering-voice on this is some of the most overwrought and maudlin shit I’ve heard in a while.