Review
Genre and Mood
L.E.J recorded Hanging Tree as a cover, and their version sits between pop and the orchestral: three voices, a backing choir and a string section in place of a film score. No review describes this recording, so its feelings, haunting and melancholic, are the song’s own, the eerie murder ballad Suzanne Collins wrote for her novel Mockingjay.
Song Summary
The song asks someone to come to a hanging tree at midnight, words Collins wrote and the Lumineers’ Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz set to music for the 2014 film. L.E.J open their first album, En attendant l’album, released on 4 December 2015, with it. The album’s credits list an arrangement by the group, strings and voices arranged by Marie Jeanne Serrero, seven string players and seven backing singers: a small orchestra and a choir around three friends.
Musical Breakdown
No source describes this cover part by part, so this breakdown names what to listen for rather than inventing a structure.
Intro
Listen for who begins: one voice, as in the film, or the three together.
Main Section
Listen for how the harmonies and the seven credited backing singers widen the song, and where the strings take over the role of James Newton Howard’s orchestra.
Outro
Listen for whether the cover ends where it began, quietly, or stays with the full ensemble.
Concepts in Focus
A cover version shows what survives when a song changes hands. Compare it with the James Newton Howard, Jennifer Lawrence – The Hanging Tree it answers and with Blankets – The Hanging Tree, another French cover of the same year.
vocal harmony is how L.E.J began: in October 2013 they won a contest run by the band Tryo by covering one of its songs with vocal harmonies, the first time the three sang together as a group.
The song comes from a soundtrack, and the cover stayed close to its film: L.E.J sang it at the Paris premiere of Mockingjay Part 2 on 9 November 2015, and the video came out three days later.
Artistic Context
Lucie Lebrun, Elisa Paris and Juliette Saumagne were born in 1993 and grew up together in Saint-Denis; the group’s name is their initials. Lucie sings and plays synthesizers and saxophone, Elisa sings and plays drums and percussion, Juliette sings and plays cello and bass. They broke through with Summer 2015, a mashup of summer hits posted on YouTube that August, which reached number one in France.
Impact and Reception
As a single, Hanging Tree peaked at number 99 in France; the album, all covers except their first original song La Dalle, reached number 4 and went multi-platinum. Listen to how three voices carry a song written for a crowd.
