“I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord...”

Purists keep faith with the Leonard Cohen gospel-tinted original. Others swear by Rufus Wainwright's recording of Hallelujah. Some tap their nose knowingly, as if leading you into a secret garden, and play you Jeff Buckley's haunting version. Tonight Cohen's song will again be catapulted up the charts after it is released as a Christmas single by the winner of The X Factor.

If this latest cover does reach No 1 - the latest of more than 100 versions of Hallelujah, which has been sung by everyone from Bob Dylan to Bono - it will confirm what every musician knows. Whoever the singer might be, it is the song that steals our hearts.

Times Archive, 1985: Leonard Cohen live at Hammersmith

Cohen will survive his present renaissance and a few more besides

BACKGROUND

• Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah: A perfect fit in words and music

• How Leonard Cohen became an X Factor winner

• Hallelujah for Hallelujah

• Hallelujah - a song that outgrew itself

The fight for a Hallelujah Christmas victory

X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's version of Hallelujah will be No 1 unless outraged Jeff Buckley fans can sabotage it

• Hallelujah: how Leonard Cohen became an X Factor winner without trying

• X Factor's Alexandra Burke breaks Leona Lewis record

• X factor winner Alexandra Burke favourite for Christmas No1

Singing - Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra notwithstanding - is easy. Writing is hard. That's why Hallelujah took Cohen two years, and hot tears, to finish. It's why Lennon and McCartney today still mint more millions than other entertainers, four decades after they last signed off a Beatles tune. And why Cole Porter will never go out of fashion.

The latest rebirth of Hallelujah also draws Cohen to the attention of a new audience, who see not a grey old man with a voice like gravel, but a singer whose lyrics stand up as poetry just as powerfully as do the songs of Dylan. Cohen is not only Canada's greatest singer (where are his rivals? Celine Dion?), but also its sweetest poet.

His Sisters of Mercy “will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem”. Suzanne “will trust you, for you've touched her perfect body with your mind”. Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, Cohen has tried, in his way to be free. And for that, sing Hallelujah.