Hallelujah for Covers

I am a big believer in covers. But not all covers are made equal. I am not a fan of the quick buck cover, the simple re-making of an old hit with little personal stamp and little vision of a new way to imagine the song. I like covers that take songs in different places, like Tori Amos’s dark and disturbing covers project Strange Little Girls with Tori reimagining songs by men about guns, Cat Power’s haunting dismantling of the Rolling Stones “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” or the classic Tina and Ike redo of CCR’s “Proud Mary” that leaves the original in its dust. I was thinking about covers this morning listening to Shelby Lynn’s Just a Little Lovin’. The album is the country singer’s interpretation of classic Dusty Springfield songs and honestly the whole project leaves me underwhelmed and makes me want to listen to Dusty, and not to compare the genius. Shelby’s a great singer, but her understated arrangements under the guidance of producer Phil Ramone, seem to take the originals, reduce the instruments and backing vocals and leave Shelby to interpret like a lounge singer. I enjoyed the songs because I knew them, but I was bored with them. And that is never a good sign with a cover.

Some songs are often covered and perhaps the biggest offender in the last twenty years has been Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Cohen’s gravelly roadweary voice is not as marble-mouthed as Dylan, but still is an acquired taste (I love him). But his lyrics stand on their own as literary erotic odes to the place where sex and death meet. “Hallelujah” is a song that resurfaced as a cover by the tragically short-lived singer Jeff Buckley, than again in an elegant cover by Rufus Wainwright used to great emotional effect (I’m so serious) in a pivotal moment in the first Shrek movie (back when computer animation making us weepy was still new). k. d. lang – the Canadian national treasure that I would listen to if she sang the phone book – covered it as part of her 2004 Hymns of the 49^th Parallel album that explored the best of Canadian songwriters (Cohen’s songs appeared along with Joni, Neil Young, Jane Siberry and others). “Hallelujah” has become a TV and movie shorthand for intense emotion, for sadness and deliverance, and has been covered by everyone including Imogen Heap, Justin Timberlake and Paramore. I love the versions by Leonard, Rufus, Jeff and k.d . lang, but I would also like to throw in the ring perhaps the most eccentric and bizarre. And one of my personal favorites.

The Tower of Song album is a compilation of Cohen covers that features some of my favorite renditions of his work, especially Suzanne Vega’s “Story of Isaac” and Tori’s “Famous Blue Raincoat.” The most intriguing interpretation is Bono of U2’s version of “Hallelujah.” Tower of Song was an album my parents listened to before I knew who Leonard Cohen was and before the lines of “Hallelujah” were seared onto my brain. But that doesn’t really matter because this is “Hallelujah” sung and spoken out of desperation. Bono whispers the lyrics like spoken word poetry or a letter someone left him while he was sleeping but the chorus of Hallelujah’s breaks through in a haunting falsetto backed by the warped sounds of guitars and synths and jazzy brass. If other covers refashion the song to be about redemptive love and loss, this is keening in a dark alley, this is a haunting, this is a singer at a bar you never want to go to where you drink until you end up having sex that’s sad and pitied. When I was little and even now those anguished “Hallelujah’s” cycle through my brain backed by the song of a saw or a guitar string warped and bending in the coming storm.