Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen released Hallelujah on Various Positions in 1984 after reportedly writing more than eighty verses, and the record label in America declined to release the album at all. The song weaves King David, Bathsheba and Samson into a meditation on love that survives being broken, and the chorus is a single Hebrew word that every guest at a Jewish wedding can sing. Couples choose it for a first dance because it is slow, hushed and familiar, and because its mix of the sacred and the earthly suits a ceremony that has just blended both. Cohen revived it on his 2008 world tour, which he undertook after a former manager took most of his savings.