St. Vincent: “Hallelujah” covers are the worst in the world”

Anne Erin Clark in art St. Vincent he's fed up with all those singers who constantly cover the classic by Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah” trivializing its original meaning. In an interview with BBC Radio, the 41-year-old American musician branded these covers as “the worst thing in the world”.

Speaking to British radio DJ Jo Whiley,
St. Vincent
he defined
“Hallelujah”
an absolute masterpiece and explained how it took Cohen many years to write that song. “It's about the difficulty of being alive, the agony and the ecstasy and all the inherent conflict of it. Then, as you know, for a period of time it became a song that people would cover on American Idol. People would sing it on American Idol and just go, 'Haaalelujah! Alleluuuujah!'. And it's just the worst thing in the world. It's the worst thing in the world.”

“Hallelujah”
was engraved by
Leonard Cohen
for his 1984 album
“Various Positions”
. The first cover that was made and which gave the song a boost in popularity was the one performed by
John Cale
in 1991 for a 'tribute album'. While the best version of the song is considered – practically unanimously – the very famous one by

Jeff Buckley
included on his 1994 album,
“Grace”
.

St. Vincent
in this period he is promoting the release of his next album, entitled
“All Born Screaming”
, scheduled for April 26. The album will collect the legacy of
“Daddy's home”
(
read the review here
) published in May 2021.