I regret not being able to make it to the Nice Jazz Festival this year for a number of reasons. Top of the list is that Leonard Cohenwas performing there. Unfortunately for him – but fortunately for the fans – he was the victim of a $5m embezzlement that forced him out of his monastic existence and onto the road for the first time in 15 years. (That’s not a metaphor – he spent the five years to 2001 as a Zen Buddhist monk.)

How fortunate, then, that he’ll be getting a nice royalty cheque for Christmas, since not one but three versions of his song Hallelujah are in the Christmas charts this year:

#36 – Leonard Cohen Himself
#2 – the late Jeff Buckley, whose version Cohen considered the definitive one; and
#1 – X Factor winner Alexandra Burke (no surprise there, then).

Rufus Wainwright was in Nice this year too. One has to wonder where his people were in this seasonal scramble. But the real winner is Sony BMG, who represent Burke, Buckley and Cohen.

So, Alexandra has won the battle of the Hallelujas. Now, I’m a fan of the X Factor, and Alexandra is a deserving winner. She has brought this secular hymn to a new audience – or possibly an audience who previously knew it as ‘the Shrek song’. But many Cohen fans were horrified at the thought of its repurposing as an anthemic TV talent show winner’s song, sung by a 20 year old girl. I had some sympathy with this view, and joined the Facebook campaign to get Jeff to the top spot. And #2 isn’t a bad result against the X Factor behemoth.

What’s really puzzling is how this is considered an appropriate Christmas song, just because it’s called ‘Hallelujah’ and has Biblical references. It’s really as bleak as we’ve come to expect from our favourite tortured poet. The Bible bits are all Old Testament, and the sex and violence parts at that – David, Saul, Bathsheba, Samson… But perhaps that’s what makes it a perfect seasonal song for today’s secular society. It has all the sound but none of the content of the Christmas message.

Now, if his anti-capitalist First We Take Manhattan or Everybody Knows were deemed carols de nos jours, even I might be persuaded to go door to door with a Victorian lantern. After all, what could be more Christmassy than a man called Cohen singing about sex, violence and consumerism?

See also:

• Just whose Hallelujah is it anyway? – BBC News Magazine, 17 Dec 08
• Jeff Buckley: A singer with the real X Factor – The Independent on Sunday, 20 Dec 08