Thursday, October 27, 2016

Broken Hallelujahs


Been listening to my favorite versions of Leonard Cohen's classic "Hallelujah" this morning, looking for a way to say that I really like Texas-based Pentatonix's new one --- without acknowledging that it's off the a cappella group's new Christmas album. Christmas? Yikes.

But there doesn't seem to be any way around mentioning that. And we did decide the other day to revive St. Andrew's/First Lutheran's annual Advent Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, but move it this year to First Lutheran and schedule it for a Wednesday evening. So the season soon will be upon us. Stay tuned for details.

Jeff Buckley's 1994 "Hallelujah" probably remains the most popular, but I'm fonder of later releases by k.d. lang and Rufus Wainwright.

The only major version that really annoys me was issued during 2014 by Kansas-based Cloverton, which tossed out a majority of Cohen's lyrics and substituted an insipid Christmas carolish version. 

I'll take my hallelujahs broken, thank you very much, since that's just the way life is. Here's the Pentatonix version:

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