AMF WC Classics Edition 122

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AMF Weekly Chart

Poll ended at Fri May 21, 2021 4:41 pm

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
13
9%
DJ Shadow - Midnight In A Perfect World
10
7%
Elliott Smith - Ballad of Big Nothing
8
6%
Ramones - Blietzkrieg Pop
9
6%
Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
10
7%
Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime
10
7%
The Zombies - Care of Cell 44
7
5%
MGMT - Kids
8
6%
Queen - Somebody To Love
7
5%
Cheap Trick - Surrender
7
5%
Iggy Pop - China Girl
5
3%
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing
9
6%
David Bowie - Sound and Vision
10
7%
Ray Koerner & Glover - Linin' Track
4
3%
Lou Reed - Satellite of Love
9
6%
Daisy Chainsaw - Love Your Money
3
2%
Pet Shop Boys - The Resurrectionist
1
1%
Bright Eyes - Four Winds
6
4%
Screaming Lord Sutch - Jack The Ripper
3
2%
Björk - Pagan Poetry
5
3%
 
Total votes: 144

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spiritualized
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AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by spiritualized »

Hello everyone,
It's time for instalment n°122 of the Classics Chart, where YOU get to nominate and vote for the best songs ever in a tournament to the death ! Only the cream of the crop will go through the grueling EIGHT weeks of charting.

Nominations will follow the rules below

- only one of the first top 1000 AM songs can be nominated each week.
- A maximum of six of the top AM 1001-10000 songs can be nominated each week.
- that leaves a minimum of 3 places each week reserved for un-acclaimed songs (if you want more than 3, the fourth + unranked song will take the spot of a second tier one)
- No ranked song can be nominated twice. Ever.

The top 10 songs by votes (then by most recent nominations) will move on to the next week. In case of equal votes and starting weeks, more songs can advance to the next week. The 10 (or less) new nominations will be added to the pool for the next contest. In case there are less than 20 songs to compete, a randomised song from the 10000 AM songs will be added.

After 8 weeks in the top 10, the song will move to the Hall of Fame.

:scared-shocked: 139 votes last week (+12)
:scared-shocked: Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah retakes the top spot this week !
:scared-shocked: 4 new entries : Talking Heads/The Zombies / MGMT / Queen
:text-bump: Kicked out this week : Simon & Garfunkel / Paul McCartney / Big Star
:text-bump: No Hoffers this week

Image

Image
Chris Willman, Yahoo Entertainment, 2017

It’s safe to say that there would have been a few million less “Hallelujah” choruses if not for Jeff Buckley, one of rock’s greatest all-time vocalists, who died 20 years ago today in a freak drowning accident at age 30. Leonard Cohen, who died last November, might also be millions of dollars poorer, since it was the Buckley’s transcendent cover of Cohen’s previously obscure “Hallelujah” that ultimately led to the song being a staple of everything from American Idol showcases to in-memoriam montages.

Buckley’s album Grace, on which his cover of “Hallelujah” appears, got off to a modest start, commercially and even critically, when it was released on Aug. 23, 1994. Rolling Stone gave the album just a three-star review, and among the mixed sentiments, critic Stephanie Zacharek was down on the song for which Grace would become best known. “The young Buckley’s vocals don’t always stand up: He doesn’t sound battered or desperate enough to carry off Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’”

Rolling Stone referred to him as “the young Buckley” in that put-down sentence not because he was 27 at the time but to distinguish him from his famous dad, ’60s folk icon Tim Buckley. It didn’t look like there was much danger of Jeff eclipsing his father — not in that moment, anyway. The album peaked at a paltry No. 149 on the sales chart, and tentative plans to release “Hallelujah” as a single were abandoned. After he tragically drowned three years later at age 30, before ever completing a sophomore effort, Buckley’s legend grew, but it was original songs like “Last Goodbye” that cultists latched on to, not his Cohen cover.

Then it was the 2001 animated film Shrek that really brought a new wave of popularity to “Hallelujah,” with two different recordings. Neither of them was Buckley’s, although it was his that music fans ultimately gravitated back to. The movie included a version of the song by ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale that had first appeared on a Cohen tribute album in 1991. And it’s generally understood that Buckley was covering Cale’s version of the song, which edited together lyrics from different stanzas that Cohen had sung at different times.

Then, when the Shrek soundtrack album came out, instead of the Cale recording heard in the movie, it substituted a fresh version by Rufus Wainwright. Anyone following the song’s history and lineage couldn’t help but be struck: Wainwright seemed to be covering Buckley’s cover of Cale’s cover of the Cohen classic.

When the tragedies of 9/11 occurred months after Shrek came out, the song was fresh enough in folks’ minds that it began to get picked up and resung, presumably because of its surface spirituality, or at least its solemnity, regardless of how well its lyrics really suited the occasion. That set off a debate that continues to this day about what Cohen’s sometimes cryptic lyrics are actually about and whether the song is truly fit for any occasion.

What almost everyone agrees on — besides Rolling Stone circa 1994, anyway — is that Buckley’s version is the gold standard of “Hallelujah’s” and the most praiseworthy of praise-the-Lords.

Rock writer Alan Light said as much in his 2013 book about the song, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlike Ascent of “Hallelujah”: “If Leonard Cohen was the author of ‘Hallelujah’ and John Cale was its editor, Jeff Buckley was the song’s ultimate performer,” Light wrote. He acknowledged that, in Buckley’s version, “the dry humor of Cohen’s original was gone; there was no room for this sardonic maturity in such an earnest performance.” But “even if Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’ didn’t deliver all of the layers that Cohen’s words contained … the passion and power of his performance are undeniable, irresistible. He polished the song to a perfect shape, in a way that allowed it to connect with a much different kind of listener than the cult of sophisticates who were devoted to Cohen’s less inviting sound.”

The list of “Hallelujah” covers is quite a monumental tower of song — to allude to another song title of the writer’s. Among the other artists who’ve taken a crack at it: k.d. lang (a favorite of Cohen’s), Bon Jovi (probably not such a favorite of Cohen’s), Bob Dylan (in concert in the late 1980s), U2’s Bono (on a 1995 tribute album), Justin Timberlake, Susan Boyle, Neil Diamond, Willie Nelson, Il Divo, Tangerine Dream, American Idol contestant Jason Castro, and British X Factor winner Alexandra Burke.

But in 2008, when Castro covered “Hallelujah” on Idol, Simon Cowell specifically noted that the Jeff Buckley version was one of his favorite recordings of all time. This resulted in a huge sales spike for Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” propelling it to the top spot on the iTunes singles chart; the single was later certified platinum, 14 years after its original release and 11 years after Buckley’s death. It was the first time Jeff Buckley had gone to No. 1 on any chart, ever.

There’s often some confusion over the song’s lyrics. When Cohen first recorded it for 1984’s Various Positions, it was marked by hope and even real religiosity as well as humor. The Cale/Buckley version borrows from different drafts of the tune. To some, it’s about depression and despair; to others, about sex and romantic abandonment; to still others, the spiritual overtones are real and far from completely ironic. The best answer is: all of the above.

Buckley initially seemed to favor the sexual interpretation, but he ultimately went deeper than that. “It’s a hymn to being alive,” the late singer once told Interview magazine. “It’s a hymn to love lost. To love. Even the pain of existence, which ties you to being human, should receive an amen — or a hallelujah.”

Says author Sylvie Simmons in her acclaimed 2012 Leonard Cohen biography, I’m Your Man: “I’ve upset a few Leonard Cohen fans by saying that I prefer [Jeff Buckley’s] version to the original. Buckley understood the strength of the melody. He sang it like he was in a cathedral.”

Indeed, it was Buckley’s version, not Cohen’s or anyone else’s, that was played at Fenway Park during a 2013 tribute honoring the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings before the Red Sox played their first home game following that tragedy.

Of course, the success of “Hallelujah” is arguably not Cohen’s anymore, now that the song belongs to the masses, or the Lord of Songs, or maybe just its purest, most tragic interpreter after all.


Listen to all 20 songs and enjoy voting for your favorite 10 songs... You can change your mind until the end of the 7 day period.

The AMF WC Classics Hall of Fame playlist :



Top Chart (number of weeks as n°1)


Nirvana - The Man Who Sold The World (1)
Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come (6)
Portishead - Wandering Star (1)
The Velvet Underground & Nico - Sunday Morning (8)
Radiohead - No Surprises (1)
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five (2)
Fleetwood Mac - The Chain (3)
Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime (1)
Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah (2)
Last edited by spiritualized on Sat May 15, 2021 6:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Schüttelbirne
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Schüttelbirne »

The Even Dozen Jug Band | "Take Your Fingers Off It" (Unranked)
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Holden
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Holden »

Rod Stewart - Gasoline Alley (BU)
"The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying."
Brad
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Brad »

1. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - The Ballad of the Sin Eater (unranked)
2. The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burrito #1 (#2605)

Thanks!
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Madzong
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Madzong »

Cruel to be Kind - Nick Lowe (#2736)
Last edited by Madzong on Sat May 15, 2021 6:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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mileswide
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by mileswide »

Brad wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 5:12 pm 2. The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burrito #1 (#2605)
+1 for #1!
All I got inside is vacancy!
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by mileswide »

spiritualized wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 4:41 pm Hello everyone
Hello Spiritualized! I'm going to be a churl and reiterate my nomination was for this live version of Jack the Ripper https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lWCOFkyeGNs
All I got inside is vacancy!
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by spiritualized »

mileswide wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 11:54 pm
spiritualized wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 4:41 pm Hello everyone
Hello Spiritualized! I'm going to be a churl and reiterate my nomination was for this live version of Jack the Ripper https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lWCOFkyeGNs
Thank you, fixed.
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by DaveC »

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - The Sorrowful Wife (UR)
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Madzong
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Madzong »

Donovan - Season of the Witch (#1218)
"On a mountain range, I'm Dr. Strange"
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Akhenaten
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Akhenaten »

The The - Lonely Planet (UR)
But I was caught, like a fleeting thought,
Stuck inside Leonard Cohen's mind
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Holden
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Holden »

Madzong wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 4:17 am Donovan - Season of the Witch (#1218)
Seconded!
"The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying."
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by Rdwdbob »

The Band - 'The Weight' (#90)
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by spiritualized »

Corrosions of Conformity - Albatross
Kitchens of Distinction - The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule
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Re: AMF WC Classics Edition 122

Post by slick »

I always just vote but...

I second KOD - The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule
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