Are you Picasso or Cézanne?

TLD(Listen). So we did. This recent Revisionist History podcast flashback episode is supposed to be about Elvis Costello, but is more accurately about the song Hallelujah as a way to understand creativity and genius. Host Malcolm Gladwell asks if it comes in a flash (Picasso) or is iterative (Cezanne), with genius emerging from versions of ideas that are layered and built on, nudged and panel beaten. The song Bridge over Troubled Water was written in 15 minutes (Picasso). Hallelujah was written in 1984 by Leonard Cohen. He had over a dozen verses running to pages in length that he never quite settled on. It went nowhere exactly.

Then John Cale asked for the lyrics, got a 15-page fax back from Cohen, chose the ones he liked and recorded a stripped-back version for a French Cohen tribute album called ‘I’m Your Fan’ in 1991. That recording then ended up in the house of someone who Jeff Buckley was staying with. He happened to pick-up the CD and listen to the song. He covered it on Grace in 1994. It went nowhere. Then he died tragically and the song was everywhere (Cezanne). As for Elvis Costello, his botched “The Deportees Club” from 1984, came back years later with a gorgeous, reworked “Deportee”.

So are you Picasso or Cezanne?