It’s fair to say that St. Vincent doesn’t enjoy singers covering Hallelujah on American Idol, calling the performances “the worst thing in the world”.
In a new interview with BBC Radio 2, the American singer and guitarist promoted her forthcoming album, All Born Screaming, which will be released later this month. She began, “Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is one of the best songs ever written, period.
“It’s an absolute masterpiece; it took them however many years to write. The song itself is about the complication that it is to be alive, and the agony and the ecstasy and all of the inherent conflict therein.”
While she captured what makes Hallelujah a masterpiece, St. Vincent doesn’t think potential idols deliver the song with justice.
“You know how, for a period of time, it became a song that people would cover on American Idol?” She asked before referring to what she dislikes about the American Idol renditions: “They’d sing it and just be like ‘hallelujah, halleluuuujah,’” she sang in a whiny manner. “It’s just the worst thing in the world.”
You can watch a video from the interview below.
St. Vincent will release her new album, All Born Screaming, on Friday, 26 April.
The album features guest spots from Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl (on new single Flea), Josh Freese, singer-songwriter and keyboardist Rachel Eckroth, drummer Mark Guiliana, Cate Le Bon (who features on the title track), producer and musician Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Poppy, Nine Inch Nails, Paramore), Warpaint’s Stella Mozgowa and composer and multi-instrumentalist David Ralicke (Beck, M83, Lucinda Williams).
She said about the new album, “There are some places, emotionally, that you can only get to by taking the long walk into the woods alone—to find out what your heart is really saying. It sounds real because it is real.”
You can pre-order/pre-save All Born Screaming here.
