She called Leonard Cohen’s original version “an absolute masterpiece about the complication that it is to be alive”
St. Vincent has some strong opinions on those dramatic covers of “Hallelujah” you could often hear on competition shows like American Idol, calling them “the worst thing in the world.”
“Leonard Cohen‘s ‘Hallelujah’ is one of the best songs ever written, period,” the singer told BBC Radio 2 in a recent interview. “It’s an absolute masterpiece, it took them however many years to write. The song itself is about the complication that it is to be alive, and the agony and the ecstasy and all of the inherent conflict therein.”
The unspecified covers she alludes to, however, lack that same nuance, she said.
“You know how, for a period of time, it became a song that people would cover on American Idol? They’d sing it and just be like ‘hallelujah, haleluuuujah,” she sang with a slightly winy, nasally tone. “It’s just the worst thing in the world.”
As St. Vincent said, Cohen’s version is widely regarded as one of the most important recordings in modern music. The song has been covered by scores of artists, and the original version sits at Number 74 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
St. Vincent’s comments come as she’s readying her next album All Born Screaming, slated to release next summer. She dropped the single “Flea” last week, and she also announced a tour to support the album set to kick off in Ventura, California next month.