Tellingly, the first version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah I ever heard was the version on the Shrek soundtrack.

Shortly afterwards though, someone bought me a copy of Jeff Buckley’s Grace album. Since then, that’s been my definitive version of the song. It’s subtle, souful and brilliant.

As much as I loved Alexandra Burke, her version blows the subtlety of the song out the window. That’s probably not Alexandra’s fault, more a symptom of whoever produces X Factor winners’ records. Leona Lewis’s recent cover of Run suffers from exactly the same damned thing.

MusicOMH have perhaps said it best here:

One thing it isn’t is a power ballad, yet that’s somehow what it’s been transformed into here. Burke has an undeniably excellent voice, but the best versions of Hallelujah are frail, almost broken sounding – think of John Cale, Rufus Wainwright or Jeff Buckley’s definitive version. Less is more, not this overblown version, complete with massed choirs and Mariah-style vocal gymnastics.

For Simon Cowell to claim this as one of his all-time favourite songs is a bit rich: if you cared about such a classic song, would you sanction its use as a faux-soul reality TV victory tune? No, you wouldn’t.

The fact is though, that the public are gullible enough to buy this type of mass-market music by the Amazon shopping cart load. The line “you don’t really care for music, do you?” has never been so appropriate.

Thankfully, because the new singles chart allows digital downloads, plenty of punters have gone out and bought both Cohen’s original and the classic Jeff Buckley version. All three versions will make an appearance in the singles chart next week.

Is that a good thing? Has X Factor unintentionally introduced the public to the joys of Buckley and Cohen? Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it? But much as I love Alexandra and wish her well, these overblown cover versions (remember I mentioned Run above) are surely the new blandness. Big orchestra? Check. Gospel choir? Check. Diva in stunning frock and big hair? Check.

I’ll be doing a comparison of Alexandra Burke and Leona Lewis in the next couple of days, but I do think one of the challenges facing the two artists and their songwriting/recording teams is keeping the two unique and perhaps moving beyond the limitations of stereotypical diva music.