Could I be doing something better with my time?

The day before yesterday I read Misty Mawn’s touching post about longings and memories. At the end of it she provided a link to two YouTube videos. Off I went, down memory lane. The next hour was spent listening to every Joe Cocker video I could find.

Yesterday I returned to Misty’s blog to read a comment I was curious about and there I was on Daisies’ blog where she had a link to this video of KD Land singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Well, you may wonder where I’ve been all my life, but I had never heard that song before. At first it sounded strange, so I was intrigued and wanted to know what it was all about. Like you could ever really know what a Leonard Cohen song is about, or a Bob Dylan one for that matter. Come to think of it, I have a very difficult time understanding poetry in general.

Back to the song. After KD Lang’s performance, I listened to John Cale’s version, then Jeff Buckley’s hauntingly painful interpretation, finally Leonard Cohen himself, then four Norwegian men with angelic voices. Then I listened to all of them again, and again. Sometimes I wonder just how sane I am.

It’s not surprising that I woke up a 3 am with the song in my head. Have you ever wished you could just bend over and pour thoughts out of the top of your head? Well, you can’t. So I began thinking about how I wished there were renditions of Hallelujah recorded by Willie Nelson, Joe Cocker, Tom Waits and Johnny Cash.

Well, I’m pretty sure there aren’t because I just spent another 90 minutes this evening looking for them. In reality the search started for another reason. Earlier in the day I found Leonard Cohen’s lyrics to Hallelujah online, but I was surprised to discover those lyrics, like the ones in the video of him singing the song, do not include many of the verses sung by most of the others. Believe me, I listened to them all again, and I can confirm it. How can this be? Don’t copyright rules apply here? Can a singer perform another’s song and add verses? And why do all the others have the same additional verses? I’m hoping there’s a Leonard Cohen website with a contact link, because I’m determined to get to the bottom of this.

And by the way, when I started thinking how I would love to hear Willie Nelson sing Cohen’s Hallelujah, my favorite song of Willie’s, You Were Always on My Mind, popped into my head and displaced Hallelujah. That Willie Nelson, he warms the cockles of my heart!

December 22 update -

On the forum on the Leonard Cohen website there is a short thread about the Hallelujah lyrics. It seems that he added verses when performing the song at different live appearances, and some artists have chosen to sing those lyrics rather than the original version.

That’s all folks!