Part of the beauty of the song is that a decent singer imbues it with their own meaning so people find different things in it.
Buckley's is soaring, spiritual and ethereal - picking up the religious aspects in it and almost making it into some sort of plaintive hymn.
Cale's is a song to a former lover, about history and broken relationships and what might have been. A song of sincerity and sorrow, beating himself up about loss.
Cohen's is introspective, questioning about life and love and religion, almost muttered to himself in a darkened room with no-one else listening.
It doesn't really matter who you like so long as it's someone who cares about the song and bothers trying to find their own meaning in it.
On the other hand, people who sing it because it's a nice pretty song that's a lovely musical backdrop to a 'sad' relationship moment in some US teen show should be be taken outside and quietly fed to wild dogs - yes, I'm looking at you Kathryn Jenkins and most of all Alexandra ?When I sing it I?m thinking about a girl who is in love with a boy and is trying to get them to notice her" Burke.
Hello, hello? Did anyone else get that in the lyrics? "I've seen your flag on marble arch, love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah". Jeez. A song about a girl trying to get a boy to notice her.