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X Factor winner singing Hallelujah this Christmas
16:41 | Friday November 28, 2008
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah has been confirmed as the song that will be released as the debut single by this year’s X Factor winner.
The song has already been performed on the current series of the ITV show, by 17-year-old Diana Vickers, who is currently 13/8 favourite with bookmaker William Hill to win the final being screened live on Saturday, December 13. Eoghan Quigg currently ranks second favourite, while the same bookmaker offers odds of 1/5 as the runaway favourite for the eventual X Factor winner to top this Christmas's singles chart.
The selection of Hallelujah follows huge exposure for the song, which was originally recorded by Cohen in 1984 and is published by Sony/ATV, on Fox’s American Idol, on which Simon Cowell is also a judge.
A performance of it during the reality TV show’s last season in March by Jason Castro in the style of Jeff Buckley’s version sent the Buckley recording to number one on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs chart the following week with 178,000 sales.
The same song further figures on The Promise, the current album by Il Divo, who are signed to Cowell’s Syco label, and on Katherine Jenkins’ latest album Sacred Arias.
Readers' comments
Simon apparently didn't understand that the phenomenon that happened after Jason Castro sang Hallelujah on American Idol was because of Jason's hauntingly beautiful performance of the song. Yes the song itself is stunning, but Il Divo's version lacks any real passion, and I can only imagine that Diana Vickers version will be a train wreck, again lacking anything akin to passion. F or Simon to say that the Jeff Buckley version of this song is one of his favorites and then to pimp the song out in this way for what he thinks will be his monetary gain is insulting to Cohen, Buckley and Castro.