Jeff Buckley, who died in 1997 at the age of 30, is back on the charts this week.
Buckley's song "Hallelujah" entered the Hot Digital Songs chart at No. 1 with 178,000 downloads, according to Billboard.biz, which also noted that his 1994 album "Grace" debuted at No. 10 on the top Pop Catalog Albums chart, selling 7,000 copies.
If Buckley were still with us, he'd have to thank "American Idol." The contestant Jason Castro recently performed the song, originally written and sung by Leonard Cohen, on the show.
Buckley, the son of the troubled troubadour Tim Buckley, who also died prematurely at the age of 28, was a singular presence in the grunge-based rock scene of the 1990s. With his haunting, almost almost feminine voice and a penchant for wild electric guitar solos, Buckley became a cult item who seemed poised -- but not fated -- to break into the mainstream. His version of Cohen's "Hallelujah," which he often stretched into a 10-minute-plus epic in concert, became the definitive version of the song for a generation.
Buckley may well maintain his posthumous chart success next week. When Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, the Irish singer Damien Rice performed yet another version of "Hallelujah."
See the video for the song here, or visit the Buckley site, apparently still maintained by Columbia Records, here.