Hallelujah begins with the mention of a secret chord discovered by the biblical King David, whose seduction of Bathsheba is chronicled in 2 Samuel 11 of the Old Testament, where David first saw and desired the bathing Bathsheba.
Hallelujah is a meditation on the conflict between the human desire for physical union and that of spiritual transcendence, with the final realization of the inability to fully achieve either.
Hallelujah suggests that even through loneliness and thwarted desire, the artist is still able to create and to give praise for the gift of creation---"a blaze of light in every word."
Jeff Buckley recorded a haunting version of Hallelujah on his solo album "Grace" (1994). In 2008, Buckley's version rose to number 1 on Billboard's "Hot Digital Songs."
Leonard Cohen allegedly told Bob Dylan that Hallelujah took him one year to write, which surprised Dylan, who admitted that an average song took him about 15 minutes to write.