GP's Song of the day: Leonard Cohen/Jeff Buckley

Former Velvet Underground member John Cale rescued Hallelujah in a spare, piano-led version released on a Cohen tribute album in 1991, but my favourite came from Jeff Buckley, who included it on his 1994 album Grace. It is astonishingly beautiful.

Hallelujah took Cohen over a year to finish, and he reportedly wrote more than 80 verses and discarded most of them before getting it right. He said: "I filled two notebooks and I remember being in the Royalton Hotel in New York, on the carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor and saying, 'I can't finish this song,' "

It was certainly worth it when you hear lyrics like this: "Your faith was strong but you needed proof/You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you/She tied you to a kitchen chair/She broke your throne, and she cut your hair/And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah."

There are now more than 170 recorded versions of the song and it often crops up on TV and movie soundtracks. Now it is reportedly going to be recorded by whoever wins X Factor this year. I really don't know what to say about that...