To think that the song Hallelujah

[LadyGlenChristmasPresent]

should be permanently banned from public performance without a licence.
I have attended no fewer than FIVE concerts of various types over the past couple of weeks and at each one, someone different has done their best to torture that bloody song into submission.
It's going round my head in a loop now and I don't think I'm ever going to get it out.
Isn't there a UN convention that covers this sort of thing?

I would only ban certain people from performing it. Alexandra Burke would be one, Leonard Cohen would be another, tbh. I would allow kd lang, rufus wainwright and john cale to do it. Jeff Buckley would be allowed if he were alive, too.

YANBU - Hallelujah needs to be sung by one person and one person only.

Jeff Buckley.

YANBU but no-one could desecrate it any more than whatever oxygen-thief of a winner of X-factor did the other year.

The Jeff Buckley version and the KD Lang version can have me weeping in about 15 seconds though .

Great minds eh famished and MsHighwater?

yabu i like it

Jeff Buckley rules

But it's Leonard Cohen's song, how can you ban him from singing his own song?! You can ban Alexandra Burke if you like though.

Cohen, Buckley, Lang and Wainwright should have a special licence allowing performance. I realise that Buckley is no more, so his would have to be a posthumous licence. Everyone else - BANNED.

John Cale's version is my favourite, but I do like Leonard Cohen's and Jeff Buckley's. No stupid overblown operatic melisma versions where the key change signals the boy's choir to join in.

I saw a panto last year where the finale was the cast singing 'We're all in this together' from HSM, complete with the 'Wildcats everywhere' chanty bit. In a production of Snow White. It was weird.

these guys should never be banned from singing it... Best version ever.

The original is totally different to the fart being sang now. IMO Jeff B's version is a completely diff song in it's own right.

It's such a beautiful song I have to ration my listening to it. I don't want it ever to get too familiar.

I don't like Buckley's version. Too haunting.

It should leave you feeling slightly grubby and shameful.

LOL at awasting - I'm sure that's exactly what Cohen wanted when he wrote it!

another vote for john cale

No Rufus Wainwright is the person to sing it properly

Leonard Cohen only in this house, but I do adore him.

Everyone else can poke it.

I love all of them.
Even quibblylips Burke and BonJovi

But then I'm the gal who weeps at every version of You Raise Me Up as well.

Can't find a Josh Grobag version of H. Shoorly shome mishtake? He's done all the other anthems hasn't he?

Cohen only here too - it's his song

Even better, have Mr C singing Famous Blue Raincoat at all these concerts, that would get everyone in the party mood

Leonard Cohen.

no one from the xfactor ever, ever, ever....

I think banning alexandra Burke from performing it (at the very least) is perfectly reasonsble. I remember watching the xfactor final last year and (amidst mh despair) wondering why no one had bothered to explain to her what the song was actually about.

It should leave you feeling slightly grubby and shameful.

SOOOO TRUE

It is a dirty and depressed middle age man's reminiscing

Having young women singing it misses the point entirely

Another vote for the one off Shrek John Cale here

Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah? Shurely shome mishtake?

Kathryn Williams is allowed to sing it to. I heard her sing it in St James CHurch and it made the hairs on the back of my neck jump about.