We may have been All Born Screaming, but St. Vincent has far less tolerance for those born singing one particular oft-awfully covered song. While promoting her forthcoming new album, the artist born Annie Clark sat down with BBC Radio 2's Jo Whiley for an interview and discussed a musical pet peeve: people covering Leonard Cohen's classic "Hallelujah," which she has decried as "the worst thing in the world."
"You know how Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' is one of the best songs ever written? Just, period. Just, it's an absolute masterpiece it took him however many years to write," Clark said. "The song itself is, like, about the complication that it is to be alive — and the agony and the ecstasy and everything and all of the inherent conflict therein. Then you know how for a period of time it became a song that people would, like, cover on American Idol?"
She continued, "People would sing it on American Idol and just be like [shifts pitch, adopts strained vocal tone] 'Haaalelujah! Halleluuuujah!' And it's just the worst thing in the world. Like, it's the worst thing in the world."
Clark is absolutely not wrong in any way, shape or form; it's needless to say that very few covers of Cohen's tour de force tap into the intricacies and nuance of the original. (Jeff Buckley's version feels like a notable exception — not that that's a hot take, either.) Prior to his death in 2016, Cohen himself admitted that he was tired of all the "Hallelujah" covers.
Check out the interview clip with Clark below, as well as our ranking of St. Vincent's discography.
