Well, it's all over for another year. Whether Alexandra Burke is a fully fledged pop star is something that will have to be decided next year, for winners of The X Factor always take about a year to reappear with a debut album. For now we have her almost inevitable Christmas Number 1.
Once you get your head round the sheer surrealism of a Leonard Cohen song being chosen for an X Factor winner's single (what's earmarked for next year? Tom Waits? Randy Newman?), Hallelujah is a suitable enough choice. It's already been covered over 170 times, is familiar to a huge amount of people thanks to its use in Shrek and The OC, and it is - let's face it - one of the most beautiful songs ever written.
One thing it isn't is a power ballad, yet that's somehow what it's been transformed into here. Burke has an undeniably excellent voice, but the best versions of Hallelujah are frail, almost broken sounding - think of John Cale, Rufus Wainwright or Jeff Buckley's definitive version. Less is more, not this overblown version, complete with massed choirs and Mariah-style vocal gymnastics.
However, critical objectivity is useless when reviewing an X Factor winner's single. It'll sell by the bucketload and have the pleasing effect of earning Cohen - one of the true legends of the music industry - a fortune in royalties. Let's face it, the best singer won. We could have had irksome little man-child Eoghan's High School Musical rendition of it....
