Hallelujah …it’s Jeff Buckley
Monday, December 15th, 2008 by Rob Brown
A titanic struggle between new and old media is emerging in the battle for the Christmas number 1 single. In one corner stands the mighty Simon Cowell, the man that holds Saturday night prime time television in the palm of his hand, in the other a motley crew of Facebook users and music aficionados.
Cowell, X-Factor godfather and impresario has decreed that this year the best selling single at Christmas will be a cover of Leonard Cohen’s climactic masterpiece Hallelujah. With the power of millions of ITV Saturday night viewers behind him he has also pronounced that it will be sung by the X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke.
Music lovers across the nation have decided that this song is too important to join the lyrical list lining the already chock-full pockets of Mr C. It is a commonly held view that the definitive version of Hallelujah was recorded by the late Jeff Buckley and a Facebook group has sprung up called ‘Jeff Buckley for Xmas no 1′ . The membership is growing by more than 10,000 a day.
The people formerly known as the audience, who also had John Sargeant so cruelly snatched from the Strictly Come Dancing strut-off, are fighting back. The downloads are at fever pitch at iTunes and the newly minted MP3 market at Amazon (use the former if you want to be counted for the official chart). If they succeed in putting the Buckley version at the top of 2009’s Christmas chart they will have pulled of a victory in the manner of David’s over Goliath.
