Hallelujah
Know the song “Hallelujah”? The one that goes “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?” (That was from memory!) Anyhow, I first heard it but Rufus Wainwright, and loooved it. However, there’s much much more to this song. In this great piece, clapclap.org covers everything you’d need to know about the song.
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 I find particularly hilarious are the comments about the original:
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.
Read on for the rest of the fascinating story. I’m not going to quote one more piece of the story because you should see the whole thing. Yet… I can’t resist:
The usage was so pervasive that, based on the numerous OC Mix CDs that were released, it seemed to inspire musicians to create their own soundalike songs, and to boost those artists who had already been working that sound. (This was the “indie rock boom” that the OC supposedly instigated, bringing sensitive-crooner bands like Death Cab For Cutie to fame and fortune.)
The most prominent example is Imogen Heap, someone who I, at least, had not heard of since a cassingle was mailed to me in 1998. But Heap’s song “Hide and Seek” soundtracked the final moments of the OC’s second season, the slot occupied a year before by a full rendition of Buckey’s “Hallelujah.” This pairing was so successful that, for the finale of season three, the final moments were accompanied, once again, by Heap, this time covering —and, to be clear, I am not shitting you—“Hallelujah.” This is the point where the OC consumes itself whole, and it is a sickeningly gorgeous thing to watch.
Articles, coverage like this, is why blogs are winning. Any magazine editor in their right mind would say “this piece, so involved and extensive as it is, can not run in any music magazine.” But they would be wrong. Yet anything truly interesting, in depth, or innovative continues to be placed either online or in a frighteningly few publications. And so the exodus from the printed to the digital word continues. (via Deron Bauman at kottke, via Andew Simone)