Hey There Delilah

Submission 7,780

About

Hey There Delilah is a song released in 2006 by American rock band The Plain White T's written by bandmember Tom Higgenson from their third album All That We Needed. The song's poignant lyrics were often mocked online and inspired parodies using the original rhyme scheme. In May 2020, TikTokers began creating versions of the song from Delilah's point of view.

Origin

On May 8th, 2006, The Plain White T's released their single "Hey There Delilah." On January 26th, 2007, the official music video was posted on YouTube by HollywoodRecordsVEVO and gained over 70.4 million views in 13 years (shown below). That year, the song peaked at the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100.^[1]

Spread

On December 28th, 2012, Redditor Toeknee2toes posted an image of a hurricane with the text "Hey there Delilah what's it like in New York City?" to r/funny^[2] (shown below, left). On September 18th, 2013, Twitter user @tommysaIami^[3] tweeter, "Hey there Delilah/ what's it like in Owl City/ are the jokes awkward and weird/ and the music's very shitty? Is it truuee (shown below, right).

On September 29th, YouTuber EpicVidsCentral reposted a vine by Landon Moss that has since been deleted which features Moss singing a short parody of the song (shown below). The video gained over 6,300 views in seven years.

On December 23rd, 2017, Redditor Gradians posted a screenshot of a tweet parodying the song to r/boottoobig^[4] and received over 6,400 points (95% upvoted) in three years (shown below, left). On December 15th, 2019, Twitter user @crocodilethumbs^[5] tweeted, "Hey there Delilah… a thousand miles seems pretty far but they've got planes and trains and cars/ Guy That Just Waked 500 Miles and 500 More: they have what" (shown below, right). The tweet accumulated over 230,600 likes and 41,400 retweets in a year. Alt Press^[7] and Nylon^[8] published articles on "Hey There Delilah" memes.

Delilah POV

On March 7th, 2020, TikToker kallistarowan uploaded an acoustic cover of the song from the point of view of Delilah (shown below, left). The video gained over 1.9 million likes in two months. On March 11th, TikToker hbcassidy also posted a remix from her point of view and garnered over 78,600 likes in two months (shown below, center). On April 23rd, TikToker scarlett_music uploaded her version that received over 111,200 likes in a month (shown below, right). The Daily Dot^[6] published an article on the trend.