Jeff Buckley - an American Singer-Songwriter & His Song "Grace"

Jeff Buckley was an American singer-songwriter most known for his cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ and his original song, ‘Grace’. Buckley’s haunting voice is well suited to his genre of alternative and folk rock with its deep emotional depth and skilled vocal range. Alternative rock is a style of rock music popular in the 1980-90s and different from the mainstream rock.

Folk music is a style of rock that combines the music from folk and rock, which was popular in the USA and UK from the 1960s.

Buckley’s song ‘Grace’ was the title of his only complete studio album (released in 1994) and has features which are usually found in rock music, these features include four beats in a bar, the use of a verse and chorus, and an instrumental introduction and bridge. Although it is not, ‘Grace’ could be described by many as more of a ‘rock ballad’ than a song, as the lyrics appear more like a poem.

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It also seems to prophesied Buckley’s own death in 1997.

The song itself has three verses and three choruses, each verse having an introduction and a bridge after the second chorus, and at the end of the song it ends with a coda, bringing it to an end. The song includes two guitars - in drop D tuning -, a bass guitar, a synthesiser, and drums, which accompany Buckley’s iconic voice, and was also co-written by lead-guitarist Gary Lucas. The texture thickens throughout the piece, especially in the coda, and is emphasised by the synthesiser strings that drop in and out throughout the piece.

Also, the guitars have distortion and flanging added to them to add to this.

Shown here is the opening to ‘Grace’, the first two bars are made for synthesiser and guitar, whereas bass and drums appear later in the third bar. With the key signature of E minor, there is a use of accidentals, which is a note of a pitch that isn’t a member of a scale indicated by the most recent key signature. Most of the song is in E minor, the opening used F minor7 and G minor7 which aren’t usually found in the scale, and have added minor sevenths.

As shown here, Buckley’s voice would slide down at the end of the phrase. He also used word-painting (where the meaning of the word is reflected in the music) throughout the song, appealing more to the folk rock genre. In the second half of the verse he uses cross-rhythms between the bass guitar and his voice on the words ‘clicking of time’.