Hallelujah

Cohen reportedly wrote between 80 and 180 draft verses. He claimed 150, and only seven were officially released. Columbia refused to release the album in the United States. Cohen called the song rather joyous when he was fifty, said in 2009 that too many people sing it, and in 2012 said he was very happy that it was being sung. He played it on the 1985 world tour.

John Cale recorded a version for the tribute album I'm Your Fan in 1991 and a live one on Fragments of a Rainy Season in 1992. Cohen faxed Cale about fifteen pages of lyrics, and Cale chose the verses. Jeff Buckley recorded his cover for Grace in 1993 and 1994 at Bearsville Studios, Woodstock, and it was released as a single in 2007. Cale's version was used in Shrek in 2001, while Rufus Wainwright's was on the soundtrack album. Alexandra Burke's cover was the UK Christmas number 1 in 2008. More than 300 singers have performed it since 1991.

The film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, says he took about five years to write it. His own live performances in 1988 and 1993 used a quite different set of lyrics. The original has biblical allusions to Samson and Delilah and to King David and Bathsheba. Cohen said Columbia told him they knew he was great but did not know if he was any good, and that for years Dylan seemed the only person to recognize the song.

Recognition

Cohen's own recording re-entered the charts in 2016, reaching number 1 in France, number 36 in the UK and number 59 on the US Hot 100.

Buckley described his version as a hallelujah to the orgasm. The Library of Congress added Buckley's recording of Hallelujah, from Grace, to the National Recording Registry in 2013, and its essay describes a spare arrangement of a reverb-drenched Telecaster and a closely miked voice. The Guardian reported that the song became a mini-phenomenon in 2008 after it was used on American Idol, and that Buckley's recording was number 2 at Christmas 2008 behind Alexandra Burke's. By late 2008 more than five million CD copies of the song had been sold.