Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" was first published in 1984 on an album called Various Positions, which Walter Yetnikoff, then head of Columbia Records, had not deemed fir for the American market. Cohen and his manager had to turn to a small independent label, Passport Records, to make the album available in the US. It contained ten songs, which, as the title of the album suggests, explore ten potential positions one may take with the things one loves: with lovers, with God, with life. "Hallelujah" was therefore meant to rhyme with "Kama Sutra", not so much with "Bless America," and it has not escaped my attention that many covers of the song, in this prudish era of ours, leave out the part that goes: I remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving too And every breath we drew was hallelujahThose lyrics were also missing on Aug 27, 2020, when the song was played twice during Donald Trump's investiture ceremony at the Republication National Convention--once as Tori Kelly's version was used as an accompaniment to a mammoth fireworks display and later the same evening as the American tenor Christopher Macchio catapulted two stanzas of the song into kitschland in a medley that squeezed Cohen's dark hymn between excerpts of Luciano Pavarotti's greatest hits and lighthearted pieces like "God Bless America."