Featured Essay: 30 Years of "Grace" Among Us

by Erik Avilez

Needle dropping on the gold vinyl. Slow spinning, soft humming. A moment of silence. Then, out of those golden lines, a golden voice: Jeff Buckley, for the first time, sang through the speakers in my office, bouncing off the walls in waves, in textures. That was Grace, for the first time on vinyl.

I debuted the physical record 30 years after the initial release of the album. I had myself turned thirty a couple of months before that, having reached the point where people stopped acting surprised about the year I was born; “1994?! Wow, you are so young!”, they used to say, and I would act as if I didn’t care. That was the same year that Grace by Jeff Buckley was released, but it took us 30 years to meet. Therefore, when I heard my gold edition of Grace, it felt like a meeting three decades in the making, as it connected to the longing and rawness so particular to the man that grew to be my favorite singer-songwriter.

Jeff Buckley’s Grace was the only studio album released during the musician’s lifetime. With ten tracks and “the kind of voice that comes along only once in a lifetime”, it inserted Buckley as  a promising name in mainstream music. However, Buckley died two years later, before his second album was released, at 30 years old - as his album and I are. The temptation to mysticize that experience is clear; from the treasured gold-colored edition of the record to the numerical coincidences, Buckley’s songs seemed to invite me - or maybe challenge me - to make him more than he was. However, as I researched and learned more about the artist that passed when I was two years-old, I realized that although Buckley would not see himself as anything close to transcendent, his music dwelled in an interspace, in a paradox of being both connected to music as a transcendent experience while having it simple and grounded in the world in which it is composed.

First, it is important to note that Buckley recognized the transcendent nature of music while not attributing that power to himself. Speaking to Hot Press Magazine about traditional music - a significant influence on the singer-songwriter and on Grace - Buckley stated that “traditional music is very hypnotic. It has just enough of the earth and just enough of the heavens.” There it is: Buckley’s interspace, a crucial part of the experience of Grace. In that connection lies not only a great part of music’s appeal to Buckley, but also his own appeal to the public.

With his voice being constantly described as “hypnotic”, Buckley’s rise to music relevance was marked by the remarkable energy he brought to his shows. His “electrifying solo performances at Sin-é [the legendary 90s club in the East Village] were causing quite the stir”. That perception of the public towards him enshrined him as a powerful, almost hallowed presence: “He sang from such an emotional place that it almost feels holy, you know?”, his guitarist, Michael Tighe, would say about him in a later interview for Spin Magazine. In that same piece, journalist Charles Moss described how audiences were in awe of “his hypnotic voice” during his acts, even though it was paired with a simple “borrowed 1983 Butterscotch Telecaster guitar”.

That did not appeal to Buckley, as he understood his role through very grounded lenses: “It shows me something about fame – that you feel people become these ideas instead of human beings and you can never touch them. But you can I guess.” One could even argue he was too grounded. Gene Bowen, Buckley’s tour manager, reported to Spin how “Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, in the midst of their ‘Page and Plant’ tour, invited Jeff to open one of their shows. Buckley, a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, turned it down because he felt he wasn’t worthy”.

That contradiction between how the public perceived Buckley and how he perceived himself and his own music was clearly present during the production of his album. Producer Andy Wallace “wanted the production to be casual, (with) a body of work that Buckley could choose from, with little direction from him”.

And so he did: from the ten songs in Grace, three were covers that spanned a wide array of styles. He goes from Nina Simone’s version of James Shelton’s Lilac Wine, to the traditional Corpus Christi Carol, and, of course, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Probably his most famous cover, Buckley approached Cohen’s haunting song like a holy ghost, with soaring vocals above ethereal guitars. That also happens to be my most appreciated cover, and my second favorite song in the album.

Also, here echoes all that imaginarium again: “the hallowed presence” sings Hallelujah, but he isn’t “worth” to play as an opening act for some of his favorite musicians. As the song starts, we are transported directly to that paradox in his interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s words: “I heard there was a secret chord / That David played and it pleased the Lord / But you don’t really care for music, do you?” 

The whole journey of Grace coming to Earth happened a little over 30 years ago… Which, by the way, was also Buckley’s age by the time of his death. That is not an effort to create another aura around Buckley; not only is that unnecessary at this point as this also doesn’t seem like something he would appreciate anyway. Of course, as a mea culpa, it also seems like he would also not be particularly invested on a golden edition of his album. For Buckley, it didn’t matter if a man’s voice was hallowed, only that music was a loud collision of heaven and earth. Three decades later, as the needle hits the textures of Jeff Buckley’s golden album, sitting back and listening to the record is a beautiful manifestation of Grace among us. And that is enough. 

1.Jeff Buckley’s Grace at 30: Revisit a classic Hot Press interview with the late singer-songwriter. Hot Press. https://www.hotpress.com/music/jeff-buckleys-grace-at-30-revisit-a-classic-hot-press-interview-with-the-late-singer-songwriter-23045689

2, Jeff Buckley’s Grace at 30: 30th anniversary interviews. SPIN. https://www.spin.com/2024/08/jeff-buckley-grace-30-anniversary-interviews/

For further reading:

Brennan, P. (2024, August 23). Jeff Buckley’s Grace at 30: Revisit a classic Hot Press interview with the late singer-songwriter. Hot Press. https://www.hotpress.com/music/jeff-buckleys-grace-at-30-revisit-a-classic-hot-press-interview-with-the-late-singer-songwriter-23045689

JeffBuckley.com. (n.d.). Grace. Retrieved May 30, 2025, from http://www.jeffbuckley.com/rfuller/buckley/faq/13grace.html

SPIN Staff. (2024, August 15). Jeff Buckley’s Grace at 30: 30th anniversary interviews. SPIN. https://www.spin.com/2024/08/jeff-buckley-grace-30-anniversary-interviews/

Erik Avilez is a Brazilian writer, screenwriter, and filmmaker based in Orlando, Florida. He is also an award-winning film editor, and a big fan of analogical media and film soundtracks. You can follow him on Instagram @erikavilez.film.

https://erikavilezfilm.wordpress.com/