Song of the Day 2/6: Tom Jones, “Delilah”

Many people don’t listen to lyrics, and even those of us who do often know the chorus of a popular song but get hazy on the verses. You can hear this at any crowd sing-along — mumble, mumble, mumble, then everyone, even people who don’t listen to lyrics, joins in on the chorus.

This song is a great example. It’s a murder ballad, relating the all-too-common tale of a spurned lover’s deadly revenge, but while I remember the song from its 1968 run on the charts (No. 2 in the UK, No. 16 on the US Hot 100) I never knew anything beyond the chorus until it caused a recent kerfuffle in Britain: The problematic subject matter prompted authorities to ban it from Welsh rugby matches, where it’s a fan sing-along on a par with the national anthem in popularity.

Nobody is sure how the song became a stadium standard for an entire country — apparently it has something to do with Jones being Welsh, though I notice they’re not belting out “What’s New Pussycat?” — or exactly when, though signs point to sometime in 2014. For his part, Sir Tom Jones, now 82, expressed “shock” at the announcement, and the British tabloids pounced when a morning show host dared defend the tune. As she noted, the mariachi horns on the chorus give it a rather celebratory air, making it fun to sing. Let’s note that nobody complained when Jones performed it for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Concert in 2012. (Also note that the lyrics illustrate Margaret Atwood’s observation, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”)

This isn’t the first time someone objected to the lyrics, though. When Jones sang “Delilah” on Ed Sullivan’s show in 1968, censors wanted him to change the line “At break of day when the man drove away” to “At break of day I was still ‘cross the way.” They had no problem with the murder, but the idea that the victim had spent the night with a man not her husband was scandalous. Jones sang the line as written, and later called the request “such bullshit.”

The song was covered in 1975 by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a popular act in Great Britain in the ’70s that never broke through in the US, for reasons that should be obvious if you watch this video.