"It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth..."

"...the minor fall, the major lift."

Tonight on Radio 2 (7:00pm), Elbow's Guy Garvey celebrates what is, in my opinion, the greatest song ever written: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

"The Baffled king composing Hallelujah."

Do Radio 2 put their programs out on download/podcasr after they've aired, this sounds really good.

Fucking hell. I've just put my Cohen Essential Collection aside, as it's been depressing the shit out of me! Must have played this song (and Famous Blue Raincoat) every day for the past fortnight. Amazing stuff.

Excellent, good heads-up

Thanks, i really like the Jeff Buckley version of this. I know it's a bit twee perhaps but i do really like this song. It never fails to make me stop and listen.

Hate that sucky song.

Hate all songs in Shrek, too, so I double hate that song.

It's on UKNova already if you haven't found it yet.

Great song.

And Guy Garvey talking about it? What an awesome idea.

Actually, despite bringing the show to everyone's attention, I didn't really think that much of it. It was interesting to hear all the different versions (and thank God they didn't play Bono's atrocity) but the discussion itself wasn't particularly enlightening.

For my part, I first heard the John Cale cover, and later sought out the Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley versions. All three are much better than Cohen's original.

I also think that it's definitely a 'male' song; none of the versions by female artists did much for me (although I would love to hear a full version of Imogen Heap's a capella rendition for The OC).

Is this it?

Yeah, that's the track, but it only contains a couple of verses; Imogen never recorded the song in its entirety. :(

Heard that X-Factor version on the radio last night; what a fscking travesty!!! :(

edit: Found this BBC article too; scored 7/8 on the quiz...

Yeah its not good.

The Rufus version is my fave.

Don't really like the song to begin with. Bores me to sleep.

X-Factor are free to mess with the song as they wish, for all I care, though I wonder why they needed to resort to doing a cover of a song at all, when she'd have sold loads with any new hastily written song.

Rufus for me too.

Let's face it though, if you're getting uppity about the X Factor version of this, you should be willing to stick needles into Will Young's eyes for ruining The Doors' "Light my Fire"

Cale all the way for me.

As I stated at the top of this thread, IMO Hallelujah is just such a wonderful song; to hear it traipsed out as a Christmas hit, however inappropriate (just 'cos the chorus sounds religious?) makes my piss boil!

Still, I guess Cohen could do with the royalties...

But better a good song than a shite one, right?

TBH though I know where you're coming from, I used to love this tune but it's been so constantly raped and pillaged over the years that I can barely even stand to listen to the decent versions of it.