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That new PPT album is tight. Get on it.

Don't you mean Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"? Or at least John Cole's "Hallelujah," since it's his abbreviated cover version that Buckley performed? IJS.

"Hallelujah" is a Leonard Cohen song.
Although Buckley's version is more like the one done by John Cale.

Daryl and Sam: Because it was an '80s night at Idol, Castro technically was covering the Buckley cover.

Pete: You're wrong--check your dates--but I don't really care, because I hate when people cover "Hallelujah." Pretty much every frat boy in a bar band has covered it between takes on "Plush" and "Santeria." No thanks. At SXSW, Phosphorescent did a badass cover of "Memories"...seriously, it's not like Cohen didn't write some other songs. Pick one of 'em. After all, many of them were written IN THE '80S.

Semantics.

Listen: I just wanted to reference the Buckley article and show how Buckley's mom was giving Castro props. No more, no less. I didn't see the performance.

But, really, Sam, are you all that surprised at the song choice? It's American Idol. Last season everyone thought beat-boxing was new and fresh and edgy. What do you expect? Even if Castro wanted to perform a more obscure track from the catalog, it's not like the producers would've let him.

Fight! Fight!

1985 - Leonard Cohen - Various Positions (original composer)
1994 - Jeff Buckley - Grace

Randy Jackson did credit Cohen, at least (but then he's the only judge that seems to actually listen to or play music).

But c'mon, the song should never be covered again. And especially not by Castro, who--no offense to Buckley's mom--butchered that ending...among other areas.

I know this kind of off on a tangent, but it's interesting to note that when Jeff Buckley first started playing live shows in NYC, it was as part of a reggae band that also featured a late Dallas sax player named Kevin Jones.

One night, Buckley and some friends ventured into the Continental Club in Manhattan to see an Atlanta-based solo artist named James Hall. After seeing Hall's performance, Buckley ditched the idea of playing in a reggae band. Within a month or so after that he was playing music that sounded very similar to that of James Hall.

I bring this up because of similar thematic thread in the original post. Buckley's Mom (Mary Guibert) came to Dallas a few years back to show a documentary film about her son at Bill's Records. Later that night, James Hall was playing at the Gypsy Tea Room, so she, Bill Wisener and I attended the performance. It was amazing, as all James Hall shows tend to be, and you could sense that the performance had really affected Mary.

If you've ever heard one of James Hall's records or seen one of his shows, it's not hard to see that Hall's influence on Buckley's music was far greater than that of Leonard Cohen or John Cale.