This is more like your uncle’s band playing in a warehouse, assuming your uncle was weird and labored under the impression that he was a crooner. It passed into the public realm almost unnoticed, and remained that way for some time; in the major Cohen biography, published in 1996, there’s no entry for the song in the index, despite the fact that the book’s name is the same as the album on which “Hallelujah” originally appears.

Michael Barthel’s EMP paper on the cultural journey of Leonard Choden’s “Hallelujah”.

I’m in my 20’s, therefore obviously the Jeff Buckley version built into my foundations. I still remember the bemusement when I heard Cohen’s original for the first time, too. It was the day I discovered it wasn’t Jeff Buckley’s own song, so of course I hunted out the origins.

It was especially surprising since Dad is quite a fan of Leonard Cohen, so I would have expected to have heard it long ago in my childhood. Perhaps that supports my quickly established conclusion that Cohen’s version isn’t really enjoyable. Via: clapclap.org.