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when he requested them), mixing religious (primarily Jewish) views with sexual innuendo. The culmination of the more common versions, leave out many of Cohen's more religious verses, leaving the song as a more sexual track, which is effectually a song about orgasms. The blame for this lies solely with John Cale, who deliberately picked out what he termed the cheeky parts, the version Cale did found it's way onto a Cohen tribute album, Cale's own album and 2 movies, and features a strong piano backed version of the vocals.

Buckley's which was released originally on Grace (though he had referred to his version from Live a' Olympia as his favourite), was the first to take the song away from the piano, onto the 6 stringed friend of many modern rock stars, the electric guitar. Buckley kept much of the cheeky side of the song, as did Rufus Wainwright and most of the others seem to keep the Buckley version.
Though off the back of Cale's success, Cohen (who had originally done the song, with the more profound religious lyrics), re-released the track with a more cheeky approach himself, totally restructuring the track from his original version.

One of the great appeals of the track is the simple way it's sung, the catchy hook, that will have you after the first listen. There's nothing about the singing of it that anyone should feel worried about, the song is simple to sing, with no overly difficult changes of note, of need to rush through any part of the track. This adds to it's appeal, it's a song that you know you can do a good version of it your drunk, or if your emotional, or if your happy or if... you see where this is going.

In fact the songs use as an emotional track is often shown up in TV shows, where it regularly seems like every show ever invented has had the track play on it, things like Shrek, House, Scrubs, West Wing, The O.C (which used the track 3 times), E.R and One Tree Hill just to name a few. The song's sorrowful and almost mournful sound gives it the saddening feel that the shows regularly need in a piece of music.

Admittedly, you might not agree with my overly biased approach to this piece, but it's impossible to name a better song, that's why this takes the rank as the greatest song of all time.

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