This is a piece that gets requested a lot. Leonard Cohen was Canadian, and when he wrote this, it initially didn’t have much success. After some following recordings by John Cale, Jeff Buckley and a feature in the movie Shrek, it gained much popularity. Many of us ask ourselves what the meaning of Hallelujah is, but probably every thesis is wrong and right at the same time, since music is subjective and everyone can attribute different meanings to it. Cohen is quoted as saying, “This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can… reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah’. The song explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist, and all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value. It’s a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion.”