You’ve heard it at weddings, at funerals, in the background of a green ogre’s swamp, and probably on every season of American Idol since 2002. It’s the secular hymn of our time. But who wrote the song Hallelujah? If you’re thinking it was Jeff Buckley, you’re not alone, but you’re also not quite right.
The man who actually birthed this masterpiece was the Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.
It wasn't a quick hit. Honestly, the story of how this song came to be is less like a lightning bolt of inspiration and more like a slow, painful car crash involving 150 verses and a man banging his head on the floor of a hotel room.
The Tortured Birth of a Masterpiece
Leonard Cohen didn’t just "write" Hallelujah. He survived it.
Most pop songs are knocked out in a few hours. Some take a week. Cohen spent roughly five years wrestling with this one. By his own account, he went through about 80 to 180 draft verses. He would sit in his underwear at the Royalton Hotel in New York, scribbling away in notebooks, literally banging his head against the floor because he couldn't find the right words.
Think about that for a second.
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One of the most famous songs in human history almost didn't happen because the guy writing it was too busy having a mid-life crisis over the lyrics.
When he finally recorded it for his 1984 album Various Positions, he whittled those 150-plus verses down to just four. And the kicker? His record label, Columbia, hated the album. They actually refused to release it in the United States. Walter Yetnikoff, the head of the label at the time, famously told Cohen: "Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good."
The "Other" Versions You Love
The reason people often get confused about who wrote the song Hallelujah is because the version we all know today isn't actually the one Cohen first released.
- The Original (1984): Cohen’s version was synth-heavy, a bit turgid, and very religious. It felt like a man standing at a pulpit.
- The John Cale Pivot (1991): John Cale (of The Velvet Underground) wanted to cover it but thought Cohen’s lyrics were too "god-heavy." He asked Cohen for the lyrics. Cohen, being Cohen, faxed him fifteen pages of verses. Cale cherry-picked the "cheeky" ones—the ones about the kitchen chair and the broken throne—and created the piano-driven arrangement that became the blueprint.
- The Jeff Buckley Transcendence (1994): Buckley heard Cale’s version while staying at a friend's apartment. He took that arrangement, added his ethereal "Hallelujah" exhales and a weeping Fender Telecaster, and created the definitive version.
Basically, Cohen wrote the recipe, Cale baked the cake, and Buckley put the perfect icing on it.
What is Hallelujah Actually About?
Is it a religious song? Sorta. Is it a sex song? Also sorta.
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Journalist Larry Sloman once described the song as being "one part biblical, one part the woman Cohen slept with last night." It’s a mix of "holiness and horniness." You’ve got King David and Bathsheba. You’ve got Samson and Delilah. But you’ve also got a kitchen chair and a broken Hallelujah.
Cohen himself said there are many kinds of hallelujahs. There’s the religious one, sure. But there’s also the one you say when you’re defeated. The one you say when your heart is ripped out. He called it a "desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way, but with enthusiasm."
It’s a Rorschach test for the soul. If you’re sad, it’s a sad song. If you’re in love, it’s a love song.
Why Hallelujah Still Matters in 2026
Even decades later, this song refuses to die. It has been covered by over 300 artists, from Rufus Wainwright (the Shrek version) to k.d. lang, who gave what many consider the most vocally perfect performance of the track at the 2010 Olympics.
The reason it works is that it doesn't try to solve the "mess" of life. It just embraces it. It's a "cold and broken" Hallelujah. It’s honest.
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Quick Facts for Your Next Trivia Night
If you want to sound like a genius next time this comes up in conversation, keep these in your back pocket:
- The Shrek Confusion: John Cale's version is in the movie Shrek, but Rufus Wainwright's version is on the official soundtrack because of label licensing issues.
- The Bob Dylan Connection: Bob Dylan was one of the first people to realize the song was a masterpiece. He started performing it live in the mid-80s when everyone else was ignoring it.
- The Notebooks: The 2022 documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song shows the actual notebooks Cohen used. They are filled with hundreds of lines that never made the cut.
How to Truly Experience the Song
If you really want to understand who wrote the song Hallelujah and why he did it, don't just listen to the Buckley version.
Go back to the source. Listen to Leonard Cohen’s 1988 or 1993 live performances. His voice is a deep, gravelly baritone that sounds like it’s been dragged through a mile of regret. It’s less "angelic" than Buckley, but it’s more "human." It’s the sound of a man who actually lived the verses he spent five years trying to perfect.
Actionable Insight: If you’re a songwriter or a creator, take a page out of Cohen's book. The first draft is rarely the one that changes the world. Sometimes you have to write 150 bad verses to find the four perfect ones that will live forever.
Check out the original Various Positions recording and compare it to John Cale's I'm Your Fan version. You'll hear the exact moment the song transformed from a synth-folk experiment into a timeless anthem.