Hallelujah before it became everyone's, when it was still his, still broken, still sacred. The organ is cheap, the voice barely sings, and the words are biblical and erotic in the same breath: "she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, she cut your hair." The label heard this album and said no. They couldn't hear what was inside it yet. It took the rest of the world twenty years to understand what Cohen already knew: that the holiest prayers are the ones spoken in bed, in the dark, by people who aren't sure God is listening.