Encore: Hallelujah

Summary

Revisionist History: "Encore: Hallelujah" – A Detailed Summary

Release Date: July 3, 2025
Host: Malcolm Gladwell
Produced by: Pushkin Industries

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1. Introduction: Personal Connections and the Power of Revisiting the Past

Malcolm Gladwell opens the episode with a nostalgic reflection on his friendship with Bruce, highlighting their tradition of exchanging meticulously crafted mixtapes. This personal anecdote serves as a gateway to the episode's central theme: the transformative journey of creative works over time.

"The point of the mixes, and I think this is true of everyone who grew up in the mix era, was to find songs that you knew about and liked and that you believed that your best friend didn't know about and would like."
— Malcolm Gladwell [00:40]

2. The Tale of "Deportees Club": From Disregard to Obsession

Gladwell delves into Elvis Costello's song "Deportees Club" from his 1984 album Goodbye Cruel World. Initially dismissed by Costello and critics alike, the song's trajectory mirrors the episode's exploration of how time and iterations can redefine a work's legacy.

"I still have it on vinyl. It goes like this. Oh God, it's awful."
— Malcolm Gladwell [00:59]

Gladwell shares his personal disdain for the original version, only to recount how a revamped acoustic rendition reignited his appreciation for the song, epitomizing the episode's message about the hidden potential within seemingly flawed creations.

3. Understanding Creativity: Conceptual vs. Experimental Innovation

Central to the episode is economist David Galenson's theory differentiating two types of innovators:

• Conceptual Innovators: Artists who produce their best work early, with clear, meticulously planned ideas. Example: Picasso.

• Experimental Innovators: Creatives who evolve their masterpieces over time through trial and error, often grappling with uncertainty and continuous refinement. Example: Cezanne.

"The art of the experimental innovator is elusive."
— Malcolm Gladwell [38:25]

This dichotomy sets the stage for comparing Picasso's immediate brilliance with Cezanne's iterative process, emphasizing how different creative trajectories can lead to enduring legacies.

4. Cezanne: The Embodiment of Experimental Genius

Gladwell introduces art historian John Elderfield to illustrate Cezanne's relentless pursuit of perfection. Unlike Picasso, Cezanne never felt his work was complete, leading to numerous iterations and even the destruction of some pieces.

"Cezanne was never finished. This is what David Galenson means by experimental genius."
— Malcolm Gladwell [22:07]

Elderfield highlights Cezanne's obsessive nature and his continuous reworking of subjects until they captured his vision, underscoring the challenges and rewards of the experimental innovation process.

5. The Evolution of "Hallelujah": A Musical Journey of Persistence

Transitioning from visual art to music, Gladwell examines Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Initially met with rejection by CBS Records and considered a failure, the song's true genius emerged through persistent refinement and reinterpretation by other artists.

a. Leonard Cohen's Struggle and Initial Reception

Cohen spent years perfecting "Hallelujah," facing numerous rejections and self-doubt. The song's original version was deemed too serious and turgid, failing to resonate with a broader audience.

"Leonard Cohen spends five years writing Hallelujah. He finally records it in 1984."
— Malcolm Gladwell [27:08]

b. John Cale's Transformative Cover

Musician John Cale, inspired by Cohen's evolving performances, creates a cover that bridges the original's depth with a more accessible arrangement. This version set the foundation for future reinterpretations.

"Cale changes some words. Most importantly, he changes the theme and brings back the biblical references that Cohen had in the album version."
— Malcolm Gladwell [31:42]

c. Jeff Buckley's Iconic Interpretation and Posthumous Fame

Jeff Buckley's rendition, though initially unnoticed, gained monumental acclaim following his tragic death in 1997. This version, characterized by Buckley's ethereal vocals and emotional depth, solidified "Hallelujah" as a timeless masterpiece.

"The tragedy suddenly propels his work and Hallelujah into the spotlight."
— Malcolm Gladwell [35:04]

6. Parallels Between "Deportees Club" and "Hallelujah"

Both "Deportees Club" and "Hallelujah" exemplify the experimental innovator's journey. Initially misunderstood or underappreciated, their true value emerged through persistence, iteration, and reinterpretation by others.

"But without the obsessives and the perpetually dissatisfied and. And the artists who go back over and over again, repainting what others see as finished. We would never have seen the beauty of Deportee."
— Malcolm Gladwell [42:33]

7. Conclusion: The Fragility and Elusiveness of Genius

Gladwell underscores the fragile chain of events that allow experimental innovations to flourish. From initial rejection to eventual acclaim, the journey of these creative works illustrates the unpredictable nature of genius and the importance of persistence.

"But if you're Cezanne and the first version you produce is just a starting point, and you never know exactly what you're doing or why, or whether your work is finished or not, the stars really do have to be aligned."
— Malcolm Gladwell [38:25]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Malcolm Gladwell [00:40]:
  "The point of the mixes... was to find songs that you knew about and liked and that you believed that your best friend didn't know about and would like."

• Clive Langer [10:06]:
  "I think it was just too commercial at that time. I mean, he wanted to write something simpler, more live..."

• John Elderfield [22:07]:
  "Exactly. I mean, what's he doing all the time?"

• Alan Light [27:24]:
  "He sort of was chasing some idea with this song and couldn't find it and just kept writing and writing..."

• Elvis Costello [34:28]:
  "Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah."

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Key Insights and Takeaways

• Persistence in Creativity: Both Elvis Costello and Leonard Cohen demonstrate that initial failures or misunderstandings do not define a work's ultimate value.

• Evolution Through Iteration: Experimental innovators thrive on continuous refinement, often rejecting their own work until it genuinely resonates.

• Impact of External Reinterpretation: The true brilliance of a work can emerge when others reinterpret and build upon the original, as seen with "Hallelujah."

• Fragility of Genius: The recognition of genius often hinges on a series of fortunate events and the right timing, making it both elusive and fragile.

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Final Thoughts

In "Encore: Hallelujah," Malcolm Gladwell masterfully intertwines personal narrative with deep analytical insights, offering listeners a profound understanding of how time, iteration, and collaboration can transform overlooked works into celebrated masterpieces. By revisiting and re-examining these creative journeys, Gladwell underscores the enduring value of persistence and the unpredictable nature of genius.

Transcript

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Pushkin years ago and this Is Going to Date me My best friend Bruce and I used to make mixtapes for each other, actually mixed CDs. We used to spend enormous amounts of time picking the songs, and then an even more enormous amount of time on the art for the CD box. My mixes were always named after popes for reasons I cannot remember. Like Pope Pius XII with a big photocopied picture of him in some ermine robe. Anyway, the point of the mixes, and I think this is true of everyone who grew up in the mix era, was to find songs that you knew about and liked and that you believed that your best friend didn't know about and would like. Which, if you're talking about someone with whom you've been sharing music your whole life, is a pretty narrow window. Anyway, Bruce put the acoustic RE release of Elvis Costello's Deportee on a special mix. I think it was for one of my birthdays in my roaring twenties. I just remember thinking two things as I listened to that song over and over again. First, I knew the first version and hated it. And this was the same song sung by the same artist. And now in this form, it was magical. How did that work? The second thing I remember thinking is this is why God invented best Friends. I still think that, by the way. Here we go. The first in our musical encore Hallelujah. In 1984, Elvis Costello released his ninth album, Goodbye Cruel World. I bought it the week it came out, because I bought every Elvis Costello album back then the week it came out. There's a theory in psychology. The music you listen to at ages 19 and 20 is the music that imprints itself most deeply on your consciousness. If you make a list of your favorite songs, you'll see what I mean. Anyway, I was 20 in 1984, so I remember Goodbye Cruel World. I listened to it right away. And this episode is about one song on that album. It's called the Deportees Club. I still have it on vinyl. It goes like this. Oh God, it's awful. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my podcast about things forgotten or misunderstood. This week I want to go back to Elvis Costello in 1984. I should say you don't have to know anything about Elvis Costello or even like his music to be interested in this story. I'm not talking about Deportees Club as a song, but as a symbol. I'm interested in understanding how creativity works, and I've chosen Deportees Club as my case study for the purely arbitrary reason that I'm obsessed with it. And maybe, hopefully you will be too, once we're finished. This is an ad by BetterHelp. One of the hardest things I think for all of us to acknowledge is how much of the stress in our lives comes from work. We're all still battling over work from home. One estimate is that over 60% of the global workforce right now is is dealing with higher than normal levels of stress. So what can we do about it? Most of us can't walk away from our jobs, but we can take steps to ease a little of the psychological burden of work. Take a few moments to sit in the sun, go for a walk at lunch, but let's not forget that therapy should also be on that list. Having someone to talk to about work who isn't from work can be a huge Help. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over 5 million. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life plus switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] Gladwell that's better. H E L P.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Deportees club is the second to last song on the B side of Goodbye Cruel World. The album cover is a picture of a little mountaintop with two trees on it, with Costello and his band members in various strange poses. It's all very 80s. The record was produced by two legends of the British music scene at the time, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. You've probably heard some of their work. They did records with Madness, Lloyd Cole, David Bowie, virtually all of the great English new wave hit songs of the 1980s and early 1990s. Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley were the guys behind the curtain. I don't know if you've ever heard Come On Eileen by Dixie's Midnight Runners Come On Eileen oh, I swear what he means at this moment you mean everything. Now I'm a terrible singer, but maybe you could make that out, that song. Langer and Winstanley. Clive Langer knows Elvis Costello, of course. They would bump into each other in the way that people in a small world always bump into each other, and new wave music in the 1980s was a small world. At one point Langer has his own band and he was doing a show on a riverboat on the River Mersey. Costello calls him up and he said.

[Clive Langer]

I'll come up and play a few songs before you go on.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That's Langer. We met at a pub on Lauriston Road in Hackney in North London. He's slightly spidery, with close cropped white hair and oversized glasses and the kind of graciousness that only the English seem to possess. An absolutely delightful person. My father is English and all older, charming Englishmen remind me of my Father, we had some tea. It was all very civilized. Okay, back to Elvis Costello.

[Clive Langer]

He came up and played all his. His best songs. I mean, his. His hits, you know, Alison and everything.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Allison, Costello's first big hit.

[Clive Langer]

And then I had to go on and do my first ever show with the same lineup and we weren't as good, you know, So I don't know. I didn't know quite how to take that.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

If you detect a little bit of friction in that, you're not wrong. Elvis Costello is a genius, and like a lot of geniuses, he has a really strong personality. A few years pass and Costello's record label decides they want to broaden his commercial appeal. He has a fanatical following among those who know new wave music, but the label wants a big commercial hit, so they turn to the hit makers, Langer and Winstanley, and the two of them produce a record for a Costello called Punch the Clock, which has a number of absolutely exquisite songs, including Shipbuilding, which Langer co wrote with Elvis Costello.

[Elvis Costello]

Is it worth it? A new into coat and shoes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You collaborate on Punch the Clock? Yeah. And you like that album? Yes.

[Clive Langer]

He doesn't.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And he. He doesn't?

[Clive Langer]

No.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Why is he unhappy with it?

[Clive Langer]

I think it was just too commercial at that time. I mean, he wanted to write something simpler, more live, more, you know, he's more of a purist than I am, so. I was brought up with psychedelic pop in the mid-60s, so I was kind of like, oh, we can do this, we can do that, you know, and he's like, oh, I want it to sound real and like Bob Dylan or something, you know. But when you get that right, that's amazing.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I want to hear a little bit more about Punch the Clock, about whether those differences in perspective had an impact on the way the record turned out.

[Clive Langer]

Not so much on Punch the Clock, we didn't have tension, we had tension later, which I'll talk to you about.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Clive Langer]

What we did have, when we did the playback of Punch the Clock, we got quite drunk and played it back really loud.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Of course they did. And how much would you kill to have been in the room with them?

[Clive Langer]

And he kind of freaked out, said, it's all rubbish, it's terrible, it's terrible. And I had to calm him down a bit and we all carried on.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

When the time comes to make the next album, Costello turns to Langer and Winstanley again, only this time, the first.

[Clive Langer]

Thing he said is, I want to call it Goodbye Cruel World. I think it's going to be My last album, which he didn't even tell the band, so he was confiding in me.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

They do a first run through recording all the songs live. Langer is the producer, the one who's supposed to be running the show. But immediately there's an issue. Elvis basically takes over because he's quite.

[Clive Langer]

A forceful, powerful guy, very eloquent and, you know, lovely, but he can sort of barge in and start changing things, but, you know. So I remember saying to him, thanks for letting me be here to listen to you make your record, you know, But I don't think it should go like that, shouldn't be like this, you know. So it was a bit. We were a bit of a standoff, I think. He went out and bought a half.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Bottle of gin and I asked Langer why Costello said this was going to be his last album. It's not like he was an old man ready to retire.

[Clive Langer]

He wasn't even 30. It was just he'd had a lot on his back, you know, he'd been through a lot. I don't know if he wanted to carry on playing the game at that point.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The result is disastrous. I hated Goodbye Cruel World when I first heard it. And remember, I'm a massive Elvis Costello fan. A couple of years ago, Costello did a television variety show called Spectacle.

[Clive Langer]

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

To the stage the one and only Mr. Nick Lowe. And in the episode where he interviews Nick Lowe and Richard Thompson, the camera pans the audience and twice you see me grinning madly. As I said, I'm a massive Elvis Costello fan. And believe me when I say, Goodbye Cruel World was unlistenable, especially Deportees Club. It was angry and loud and upsetting. And I'm not the only one who feels that way. In 1995, the album is re released by Ryco Disc Records and and Elvis Costello writes in the liner notes, congratulations, you've just purchased our worst album. You have to kind of admire his honesty. Except on that same re release, Costello includes a new version of Deportees Club. One of the songs on the original album he hates so much, he gives it a new melody and plays it by himself. An acoustic version shortens the title to Deportee fiddles with some of the lyrics and it never appears anywhere else, just on this random re release by Rykodisk Records, whatever that is. And I would never have heard it except that my friend Bruce ran across it and played it for me. Bruce, by the way, was also in the audience for that Elvis Costello TV show, grinning Madly. Anyway, Bruce and I used to make mixtapes for each other and he puts this new version, deportee on a mixtape for my birthday and I become obsessed with it. I'll bet I sing parts of it to myself almost every day. I don't really know why, but it might be one of my favorite songs ever. There's a line in it that jumps into my head whenever I'm sad. It's so perfect. A little couplet about the dissolution of romantic love and you don't know where to start or where to stop. All this pillow talk is finely talking shop.

[Clive Langer]

Can we play it?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. I'm in the pub with Clive Langer, the producer of the original awful version, Deportees Club. Strangely, he'd never heard the new obscure and amazing version of the song he produced so long ago. Want to hear the his new version? Yeah.

[Clive Langer]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So I found it on my iPhone. And Langer leaned his head over the table so that his ear would be right next to the tiny phone speaker. Let's see, is this the one?

[Elvis Costello]

In the air of the Dirt Chamber nightclub Bar grill standing for fly the glass r all your troubles you confess do not.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You know.

[Clive Langer]

It sounds like he's found.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The song, but he didn't know at the time either that that's what the song. I mean, that's what's sort of fascinating, that. Yeah. Neither of you in the moment. No.

[Clive Langer]

Well, sometimes, you know, if it's not sounding right, maybe. I don't know, maybe we were not focused enough. You know, maybe we were making a record, but we were miles away.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You know, in the end they, Elvis Costello and his producers all thought they had put out something mediocre. What they didn't understand until much later was that that mediocrity contained a bit of genius. It's just that it hadn't become genius yet. That's what I want to talk about. Time and iteration. What happens when genius takes its sweet time to emerge. I know that this is just one 3 minute song. Maybe you don't even like it. But every time I hear it, I think the same thing, which is this is something that gives a lot of people in the world pleasure, including me. And it almost didn't happen. If Elvis Costello doesn't go back and revisit Deportees Club, turn it into Deportee, we miss all that beauty and the thought of that breaks my heart. There's a theory about creativity that I've always loved. It's an idea that an economist named David Galenson came up with. Galenson and is an art lover. And it strikes him when looking at modern art that there are two very different trajectories that great artists seem to take. On the one hand, there are those who do their best work very early in their life. They tend to work quickly. They have very specific ideas that they want to communicate, and they can articulate those ideas clearly. They plan precisely and meticulously. Then they execute. Boom. Gilenson calls them conceptual innovators. Picasso is a great example. He bursts on the scene in his early 20s and electrifies the art world at the turn of the last century. I think that someone like Picasso is who we have in mind when we think of that word, genius. But Galenson says, wait a minute, there's another kind of creativity. He calls it experimental innovation. Experimental innovators are people who never have a clear, easily articulated idea. They don't work quickly when they start off. They don't really know where they're going. They work by trial and error. They do endless drafts. They're perpetually unsatisfied. It can take them a lifetime to figure out what they want to say. Who's a good example? Cezanne. Every bit as famous and important a painter as Picasso. Maybe the greatest of the Impressionists who reinvent modern art in Paris in the late 1800s. But Cezanne's genius and Picasso's genius, they could not be more different. Why don't we start with your favorite? Do you have a favorite in this room?

[John Elderfield]

Well, maybe my favorite at the moment is that one the back.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I'm talking to a man named John Elderfield. He's a Cezanne expert. And he took me to that gallery at the Metropolitan Museum in New York where they have all their Cezannes. Easily a few billion dollars worth of paintings in one room. And it took only about five minutes. Wandering from picture to picture with Elderfield to see experimental genius in action.

[John Elderfield]

So this is one of the many portraits of his wife that Cezanne made. And it's one of four pictures done in a short period of time when they were living together in Paris.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The Cezanne we're looking at is a picture of a middle aged woman seated. Her head is tilted slightly to the side. As with a lot of Cezanne's portraits, we can see only one of her ears. He didn't like doing the second ear. She's sitting quietly, almost floating in the chair.

[John Elderfield]

And I think it's arguably one of the greatest portraits that he did.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

It's one of a series of four similar Portraits. Elderfiel says that the first two are a little smaller, looser, maybe one traced from another, and then a third, much like the one we're looking at, but without any background painted in just the figure. Is this very typical of the way he worked? So he just essentially comes back to her four times? Yeah, and then he gets it right. Notice my assumption here, because what I was thinking when I said that bit about he gets it right the fourth time was that if Cezanne did four versions, he must have been marching towards some kind of preordained conclusion. He has an idea and he's perfecting it. But that's not Cezanne. Standard practice is you do a sketch, work out the problems, do a finished version. Cezanne kind of starts in the middle. The fourth version of Cezanne's portrait of his wife, the one we're looking at, is less finished than his second and third versions.

[John Elderfield]

For example, here you can see there's unfinished parts, putatively unfinished parts. Like the area of the dress there where there's, like. You can really see the ground of the canvas and all the way through the lower part. And you can see he's been putting these brushstrokes down and not actually filling them all together.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Cezanne didn't work according to some clear linear plan. He basically just did versions over and again, iteration after iteration, trying to stumble on something that seized his imagination. Many of Cezanne's paintings are unsigned because he doesn't want to admit to himself that he's done. He does portraits of his art dealer, Ambrose Villard, and he makes him come for 100 sittings. 100?

[John Elderfield]

A hundred.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Normally there would be. How many in that year?

[John Elderfield]

Well, I mean, normally for portraits, it would just be a relatively short number. I mean, five or something.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Why does he need a hundred?

[John Elderfield]

Exactly. I mean, what's he doing all the time?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Cezanne was never finished. This is what David Galenson means by experimental genius. And Galenson points out that you can see this creative type in virtually every field. Herman Melville publishes Moby dick when he's 32, writes it in a heartbeat. He's Picasso. Mark Twain publishes Huck Finn when he's in his late 40s. And it takes him forever because he ends up obsessively rewriting and rewriting the ending. He stays on. Orson Welles does Citizen Kane when he's 24. Picasso. Alfred Hitchcock doesn't reach his prime until his mid-50s, after he spent his entire career making one thriller after another, playing with the genre over and over again. Cezanne. But there's one field where I think Galenson's theory plays out the most powerfully, and that's music.

[Elvis Costello]

It goes like this. The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composing Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That's the song Hallelujah. It was composed by the Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, but basically everybody has done a cover of hallelujah. Rufus Wainwright, U2, Jeff Buckley, Bon Jovi, John Cale, Bob Dylan, I could go On. It's featured in countless TV and movie soundtracks, and if you ride the New York City subway on a regular basis, you'll probably hear a busker singing it virtually every day. Like a good Canadian. I go to a Canada Day celebration every year at Joe's Pub in Manhattan where local artists sing cover versions of Canadian songs. Every year someone does a version of Hallelujah. Every year it brings down the house. And here's what's interesting about that song. It is so not Picasso. It is Cezanne. Textbook Cezanne.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

A few years ago, the music writer Alan Light wrote an absolutely wonderful book, an entire book on the song Hallelujah. It's called the Holy or the Broken. And one of the big themes is how peculiar Leonard Cohen is. He's a poet, a tortured poet.

[Alan Light]

He is a writer in that way that he labors over what these lyrics are line by line, word by word. Throws a lot away, spends a great deal of time. And Hallelujah, famously out of all of these, is probably the song that he says bedeviled him the most.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That's Alan. Like, he came by my house one day to talk about Hallelujah.

[Alan Light]

He sort of was chasing some idea with this song and couldn't find it and just kept writing and writing and, and depending when he tells the story, wrote 50 or 60 or 70 verses for this song, which I don't.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I mean, you've been writing about music for many, many years. Have you ever heard of a musician who wrote 80 different?

[Alan Light]

I don't, I don't think so. I mean, and I don't know what that. I don't know if that means variations on verses. I don't know if that means entirely like how much of this is exaggeration. But it doesn't matter. It's at a whole other. It's a whole nother level. Well, there's the famous story that, you know, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan have this kind of mutual admiration thing. And apparently they met up in the 80s. At some point they were both in Paris and they went to meet at a cafe and Dylan said, oh, I like that, that song Hallelujah which is a fascinating piece of this story, that really the first person who paid attention to Hallelujah as an important song was Bob Dylan. But he said to Leonard, you know, I like that. So how long do you work on that? And Lennon said, I told him that I'd worked on it for two years.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Which was a lie. Cohen later confessed it took him much longer. Then Cohen asks Dylan how long it took him to write the song I and I.

[Alan Light]

And Bob said, yeah, 15 minutes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Dylan is Picasso with Leonard.

[Alan Light]

It's not the first thought, best thought school at all. And he talks about, you know, being in a hotel room in his underwear, banging his head on the floor because he couldn't solve this song. Hallelujah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Leonard Cohen spends five years writing Hallelujah. He finally records it in 1984. It's for an album called Various Positions. When Cohen finishes recording the songs, he takes them to his record label, which is cbs. To the head of cbs, who's this legendary figure named Walter Yetnikov, who's the guy who releases Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bruce Springsteen's Born in usa. Not a dumb guy. Yetnikov listens to Cohen's songs and says, what is this? We're not releasing it. It's a disaster. The album ends up being released by the independent label Passport Records. It barely makes a ripple. And if you go back and listen to that first Hallelujah and try to forget how beautiful future versions would be, the song's failure makes sense. It's not there yet. There's an essay written by Michael Parthal about the trajectory of Hallelujah. And he calls Cohen's original version so hyper serious that it's almost satire. Kind of turgid, isn't it? But Cohen's not done. He keeps tinkering with it. He plays it in concerts and he slows it down. It becomes twice as long. He changes the first three verses and leaving only the final verses the same. The song becomes even darker this time around.

[Elvis Costello]

Yeah, I sing your flag on the marble arch but listen Love Love is not some kind of victory march no, it's a cold and it's ever out broken Hallelujah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hallelujah One night, Cohen is playing this version at the Beacon Ballroom in New York, and the musician John Cale happens to be in the audience. Cale is a legend, used to be in the Velvet Underground, a really pivotal figure in the rock and roll avant garde. He hears this song come out of Cohen's mouth and he's blown away. So he asked Cohen to send him the lyrics. He wants to do a version of it, so Cohen faxes him 15 pages. Who knows what the lyrics actually are at this point? Cale says that for his version, he took the cheeky parts. He ends up using the first two verses of the original combined with three verses from the live performance. And Kael changes some words. Most importantly, he changes the theme and brings back the biblical references that Cohen had in the album version.

[Elvis Costello]

Maybe there's a God above All I ever learned from love Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And.

[Elvis Costello]

It'S not a cry you can hear at night it's not somebody who's seen the light It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Cale is really the one who cracks the code of Hallelujah. According to Alan Light, this cover version appears on a Leonard Cohen tribute album put together by a French music magazine. It was called I'm youm Fan, came out in 1991. Almost nobody bought I'm youm Fan, except, weirdly, me. I think I found it in a remainder bin in a little record store on Columbia Road in Washington, dc. Another person who bought I'm youm Fan was a woman named Janine, who lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn. She was good friends with a young aspiring singer named Jeff Buckley. He used to house sit at her apartment. And one time when Buckley's there, he happens to see the CD of I'm youm Fan. He plays it. He hears John Cale's version of Hallelujah and decides to do his own version of that version. He performs it at a tiny little bar in the East Village called Cheney, where he happens to be heard by an executive from Columbia Records. So Columbia Records ends up signing Buckley, and he records his version of Hallelujah for the album Grace, which ends up being Buckley's first and only studio album. It came out in 1994.

[Elvis Costello]

Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too and every breath we drew is Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Now, I'm guessing that Buckley's version is the one you're most familiar with. It's the famous one, the definitive one. It's not really a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's a cover of John Cale's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, only with Cale's piano swapped out for a guitar. And of course, Buckley swaps out Cale's voice for his own extraordinary voice.

[Elvis Costello]

Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Every subsequent cover, and there have been. Hundreds are really covers of Buckley covering Kael covering Cohen. So the evolution finally stops. But wait, not really.

[Alan Light]

Buckley records the song in 1994. Still, nobody particularly pays attention to it. I mean, again, in retrospect, we think of Jeff Buckley as this very important figure and this big influence on Radiohead and Coldplay. But nobody bought Grace. Nobody bought Jeff's record. When it came out, it peaked at number 160 on the charts or something. It was a huge disappointment after all the hype around him. So that didn't make it a hit.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Buckley is this incredibly handsome man, looks almost ethereal, like Jesus with that incredible voice. But none of that is enough until 1997, when something tragic happens. Buckley's in Memphis and he goes swimming in one of the channels of the Mississippi. He's wearing boots and all his clothing and singing the chorus of Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. And he vanishes. Never seen again. And that tragedy suddenly propels his work and Hallelujah into the spotlight.

[Alan Light]

And it's really kind of, you know, as you hit the new century, that's when the snowball kind of starts. The first few covers, the first few soundtrack placements. It's 15 years since Leonard recorded this song.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

15 years. And think about how many incredible twists and turns that song takes before it gets recognized as a work of genius. It just happens that the independent label Passport Records releases the first version after the album it's on is rejected by CBS Records. Then Leonard Cohen doesn't give up, keeps tinkering and performing new versions of Hallelujah. John Cale, one of the most influential musicians of his era, happens to hear Cohen doing that. He revises the song some more. Cale's version goes out on the obscure French CD I'm A Fan, which goes nowhere except Janine's living room in Park Slope. Engineen happens to have a house sitter who happens to play it, happens to like it, and happens to have an ethereal, amazing voice. Buckley's version goes nowhere until he happens to die under the most dramatic and heartbreaking of circumstances. And then, finally, we recognize the genius of this song. But think about how fragile and elusive that bit of genius is. If any of those incredibly random things don't happen, you probably would never have heard Hallelujah. I don't think this crazy chain of happenstance matters so much with conceptual innovations. Paul Simon once says of Bridge Over Troubled Water, one of the most beautiful pop songs ever written. It came so fast, and when it was done, I said, where did that come from? It doesn't seem like me. The song came out perfectly. You can evaluate it right away. It doesn't require 15 years worth of twists and turns and random events. The world is really good at capturing conceptual creations. Or at least we don't miss as many conceptual works because they don't require that the stars be perfectly aligned. But if you're Cezanne and the first version you produce is just a starting point, and you never know exactly what you're doing or why, or whether your work is finished or not, the stars really do have to be aligned. Cezanne was his own worst enemy, in a way. He threw up barrier after barrier. He wasn't thinking of us when he painted his paintings. That was really John Elderfield's point. The art of the experimental innovator is elusive.

[John Elderfield]

There are some of them which now are in museums, which we know he had tried to destroy. I mean, and you can see in some of them the cases of where he slashed the canvases.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Why would he destroy his own canvases?

[John Elderfield]

You know, he had certain ideas about what he wanted to do and felt he actually never was actually getting to that point. There are other paintings done much later where he simply abandons them. And Picasso said that, you know, what actually engages us is Cezanne's doubt, his uncertainty.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

He's obsessive.

[John Elderfield]

Yeah, he's absolutely, just totally obsessive.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Elvis Costello, Deportee in its original flawed form. It comes out in 1984, the same year, by the way, that Hallelujah first came out. And I'm not sure that's a coincidence, because 1984 is a very particular moment in pop music. The biggest album of that year was Michael Jackson's Thriller. Pop music glossed to perfection. There's not a single stray note or emotion on that record. It's the antithesis of songs like Hallelujah or Deportee. Along comes Costello. He wants to make an album in the midst of that cultural moment, and he's not interested in glossy perfection. His marriage is breaking up. He's having financial difficulties. He says later that Langhmer and Winstanley were ill equipped for dealing with someone of my temperament. At that time, a nurse with a large sedative syringe might have been more appropriate. Costello writes a series of dark, emotional, bitter songs, gritty and spare, to match his mood. Something not 1984. Meanwhile, Langer and Winstanley have been brought on board to produce hits. Polished, exquisite.

[Clive Langer]

Every little bit was pondered over and cared, you know, thought about and put together very carefully. I mean, you had Bands like Scrutiny Polity at that time, you know, spending nine months on a song and Trevor Horn spending four weeks on the snare sound for Two Tribes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Two Tribes was an album by a hugely popular band called Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and they spent a month just getting a particular drum sound. Right.

[Clive Langer]

So we weren't that pernickety, but we were dealing with a world that was, you know, perfection. It was. We were trying to make pop perfection.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You can imagine what happened when that World collides with Elvis Costello.

[Clive Langer]

Some of it just sounded like. I mean, even the band were kind of not very excited by some of the material. So it wasn't a great experience, but we did it very quickly.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

What does quickly mean?

[Clive Langer]

In the time it took Trevor Horn to get a snare sound for Two Tribes. So it was about three or four weeks.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. The whole album, it was a mess. Perfectionism in a hurry. That's how you get to the bitter words. Congratulations. You've just bought my worst album. Goodbye cruel world is not good. It's unlistenable. But it's what happens next that matters. You know how people always say, put your failures behind you, get on with your life, Never look back. Elvis Costello does none of those things because he Cezanne, he's not Picasso. He carries around a little black book where he writes draft after draft after draft of the songs he's thinking about. He changes lines in the middle of songs he's already recorded. He rearranges songs at different tempos or in different time signatures. He cannibalizes his own work, creating new songs out of old songs. And I don't know where to start or where to stop. He doesn't want to sign his name to the painting. And thank God there are people like him and Cezanne in this world. Because without the obsessives and the perpetually dissatisfied and. And the artists who go back over and over again, repainting what others see as finished. We would never have seen the beauty of Deportee.

[Elvis Costello]

And you don't know where to start or where to stop. All this pillow talk is nothing more than finally talking.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You've been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard, do us a favor and rate us on itunes. You can get more information about this and other [e-mail] or on your favorite podcast app. Our show is Produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne Scott, and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flan Williams is our engineer and our fact checker is Michelle Sirocca. The Panoply management team is Laura Mayer, Andy Bowers, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

[Elvis Costello]

Potty Potty.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

This is an iHeart podcast.