Plain White T's - "Hey There Delilah"

Oh, come on. This is just unfair, right? I don't do bad American pop-punk anymore, so why exactly is it that I genuinely believe the Plain White T's' "Hey There Delilah" to be truly among the best songs of the year and possibly the best of its genre (that is to say, sensitive semi-acoustic emo-pop) in the last decade? I mean, look at their name. Look at the rest of their back catalogue, specifically the insipid, sub-FOB pop-rock "Take Me Away". Look at their sullen, sepia-tinged promo photos in which they'd rather contemplate their favourite Smiths songs in a generally world-weary fashion than have an ounce of charisma and actually look at the camera (Yes, I know I was called a wanker last time I discussed a band's photos on here, but the above was just asking for it, right? Besides, this isn't about what they actually look like so much as it's about how some Hollywood Records high-up told them to pose in order to catch the attention of weepy MCR fans across the world, and criticising a record label for not giving a shit about the music is always fun). Now, if that overlong bracketed 'please forgive me' segment hasn't made you completely forget what I was talking about (I know it's done just that for me, but my attention span is sufficiently below average for it to have not affected you too.), all of the aforesaid problems (bad image, bad moniker, bad songs) had previously convinced me that even though the re-released "Delilah" had a lovely gatefold cover which was a little bit like a cheap version of The Maccabees' "About Your Dress" (but then, on the other hand, the track wasn't four minutes of wannabe-Kooks art-school pretentious shite, so I guess it equals out), it wasn't the sort of thing I was into. Yeah, I was wrong - it happens to the best of us - and "Delilah" is the sort of song that even my deepest indie sensibilities couldn't prevent me from falling in love with.

I first heard the track seemingly millions of years ago - all I know for sure is that it was on the PureVolume.com, a former regular online haunt for me (and presumably, countless others who steadfastly refused to use MySpace... and were technically too young, although that doesn't sound as impressive), that it was the whole site's most played song ever, or something like that, for a week, and that I liked it quite a lot. Now, I won't use the term 'love'; I rarely 'love' a song on my first listen (although, contrarily, I do actually reckon it did just happen five minutes ago with the new Wombats single), and, annoyingly, I'm not sure I actually listened to it more than once. And so, in the rather epic interval between then and now (around eighteen months by my calculations, although my calculations are rarely correct now that I don't sit next to Richard in maths lessons), my only knowledge of the T's has come from sporadically-received news of imminent releases, and, crucially, a solo acoustic performance of "Delilah" on the BBC's otherwise pitiful Reading and Leeds coverage. Now, any British music fan with access to a television set will know what I mean there: at random intervals during the hours otherwise dedicated to festival live footage and more ugly Radio One people than you can count, they occasionally plucked a young band - or Nick Lowe - to perform a solitary acoustic set in front of a camera in some scenic location (a forest, a platform looking over the Reading site, or a pseudo-New Rave-looking studio). And when T's frontman Tom Higgenson performed "Delilah" there, it was, amusingly, the first time I'd heard the track in a bloody long time. And so, as heroically portentous and literary as it sounds (as well as possibly sounding like I'm talking about cancer) , I realised I couldn't continue ignoring it.

Ooh. Now where to go? My apologies if you haven't enjoyed this particular review, but this is one of the first instances in probably a few weeks when I've had simply loads to say about a particular song, and I thought I could potentially make up for last month's fiasco (Six posts in a month? I'm lucky to have escaped with my life, I suppose) and any other fiascoes that may soon occur if I can belt out a thousand words on a song that you probably don't even like. But I think that's definitely the way this blog works; I either have far too much to say (so much that people apparently lose interest after the first sentence and comment solely on that calling me a wanker (I'll admit it, that comment really pissed me off) or not enough. Today I have far too much. "Hey There Delilah" is beautiful, anyway. And in that you have four words (the 'anyway' is necessary by the way, because this blog would be about twelve words long without unnecessary words and other such contraventions of Orwell's outlined six rules of English prose writing) that could effectively replace this post completely. But it won't, and I shall now proceed to actually dissect the song.

As with a small selection of brilliant songs and several other very good ones, it's nigh-on impossible to put a finger on what makes "Delilah" so good. Actually, no. That's a lie. It's the lyrics. That's a theory of mine (perhaps not a very good one, seeing as I'm sure many people have similar feelings, but just don't have MP3 blogs on which to air them); that whenever you speak of an acoustic song's delivery, you're really talking about the lyrics. That's what acoustic songs are really all about; the lyrics, and the sparse musicianship of the track is simply a way to elevate those lyrics above everything else. Right? The lyrics are the only thing of true importance, the centerpiece, the foundation that everything else is built on. And though Higgenson's aren't up to the standards of Bowie's or Lennon's or Sufjan's or Conor's - there are no references to "the lonely once bandaged" who "lay fully exposed, having undressed their wounds for each other", for instance - they're just nice. And that's another key word here, nice. He's singing to the titular Delilah, sure, but that doesn't matter. Rather than being specifically directed at the one person, he's really just explaining his feelings about that person (for the world to hear, or perhaps not, because no one had a clue who the band were when the track was first released), and as such it isn't a closed book like some of those legendary lyricists' songs - it's not a solitary, ultra-personal cry for help like "Poison Oak", it's a pop song. It's a pop song, and I still can't quite believe how good it is.

[MP3] Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah

(So, there you go. Zokotou.com informs me that that was 1150 words long, which, I believe, makes it the longest post on here which isn't an album review. Which is vaguely amusing. Let's only hope that this isn't as much of a disaster as the Good Charlotte review, which became the most-viewed page on the whole site, and was downloaded so many times that I eventually had to remove the link from the post so I had enough bandwidth to write about some other things sometimes.)