Jeff Buckley: "Hallelujah"

Jeff Buckley: "Hallelujah" - An awning of an awning of a live version, sure, but Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" owns. To borrow Sasha Frere-Jones' terminology, Buckley's booty isn't aloof "killingly good"; for an absolute bearing of TV- and film-watching downloader’s, the siren-voiced accompanist steals "Hallelujah" from both its aboriginal composer, Leonard Cohen (see: Brian Howe's Cohen reissues review), and John Cale, the man whose Shrek-appearing awning best acutely afflicted this prayerful, bell-like take. If there are adolescent men in coffeehouses everywhere attempting fluttery choir and agilely boundless electric guitar accompaniment, this song-- allotment of a Buckley best-of out May 22-- is to blame. Even so, it owns.

At the contempo EMP Pop Conference, Michael Barthel endlessly analyzed the song's adventure from Cohen's overproduced, gospel-backed 1985 anomaly to the overwhelmingly blue 1994 aria accustomed to millions from "The O.C.", "Scrubs", and, ugh, that new Abatement Out Boy album. It may be about absurd now to abstracted Buckley's adaptation from its sociocultural baggage, and acutely he simplifies some of the aesthetic nuances of Cohen's beneath arresting original, affairs into bathos and the adventurous artisan myth. Still, there's article about the song, and absolutely Buckley's recording-- algid breath, adapted guitar work, that voice-- which causes it to transcend both aerialist and artisan to become allotment of a broader pop consciousness. Such is its ability that my fiancée and I still abatement comatose to it some nights, years afterwards advertent it, but we apperceive we don't "own" it anymore; no one does.

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Enjoy... Jeff Buckley: "Hallelujah"