Hallelujah – Does Alexandra Burke’s cover version match up to the classics?
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.
