Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is a song that I like.

While reading a blog posting yesterday morning, I came across a link to one of my favorite clips from The West Wing, where it was used for the final episode of the third season. Sorkin used the Jeff Buckley version, which I prefer slightly over Leonard Cohen’s. I have been playing various versions all day, partly to escape from writing a conference paper for this weekend. YouTube is awesome. Ain’t it? Especially if you want to not work.

I thought some of you might like to watch it.

Here is the Leonard Cohen version. Then two more versions by Jeff Buckley, live in Chicago and NPA Live ‘95. Both are good. Here is a link to the lyric and some interesting factoids.

See how easy it is to pick the YouTube reality over American Idol (although on occasions they don’t seem to be much different) and the TV West Wing over the real one that George W Bush presides over.

Hallelujah.