In a previous era, a song like that could’ve turned Plain White T’s leader Tom Higgenson into an actual star. Once upon a time, that was Paul Simon’s story. “Hey There Delilah” was a random-ass stealth hit that took years to climb the Hot 100. It’s all there - the basic fingerpicking with the soft string arrangement, the wounded cracking of the voice, the deeply goofy lovelorn lyrics that go for romanticism but come off a little deluded and jerky when you really think about them. It might be that decade’s purest example of the form. But “Hey There Delilah,” the band’s one hit, is a total sensitive acoustic-guitar white-guy song.

And Plain White T’s are a super-polished pop-punk band, not an acoustic-guitar situation. Daniel Powter plays piano, not guitar, though he’s still a sensitive white guy with an acoustic guitar at heart. Blunt served in the military, so he might not be that sensitive - though he did tell stories about playing his acoustic guitar while riding around on top of a tank, a truly insufferable image that might also represent a terrifying new mutation of the sensitive white guy with acoustic guitar type. Some caveats here: James Blunt wasn’t a one-hit wonder in his native UK, though he certainly was one here. That’s what happened with James Blunt, with Daniel Powter, and with Plain White T’s. But those sensitive white guys tended to be one-hit wonders, and their hits were goofy little cultural blips that could easily be dismissed as novelties. Bush administration, a few sensitive white guys with acoustic guitars made chart-topping hits.

But something funny happened to that archetype in the ’00s. This century, sensitive white guys with acoustic guitars are no longer at the cultural vanguard. (Bob Dylan was the prototype for all those guys, but Dylan was never especially sensitive.)

In the ’60s and ’70s, sensitive white guys with acoustic guitars became pop titans: Donovan, Paul Simon, James Taylor. The archetype has been around, at the very least, since the ’50s folk revival, though god knows it might’ve already been a cliché by then. Sensitive white guys have been picking up acoustic guitars for decades and decades. The sensitive white guy with the acoustic guitar will never, ever die. It will be a work of fiction, notwithstanding, since the melody’s account of Delilah didn’t really occur, a reality that scholarly specialist Anna Sproul-Latimer reminded us on Twitter this week.In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Is “Hey There Delilah” based on a true story? “I just needed to make up the remainder of it,” he said. Higgenson worked through the melody north of a six-month time frame in the wake of meeting Delilah. The melody recounts the narrative of a young lady and a kid in a far-removed relationship who discuss their likely arrangements – she’ll get done and he’ll be a demigod. Tom Higgenson FAQs What is the meaning behind the song “Hey There Delilah”? Two more years and you’ll be done with school Someday I’ll pay the bills with this guitarīut they’ve got planes and trains and carsĪnd we’ll just laugh along because we know

Who wrote hey there delilah lyrics