Delilah

"Delilah" is a song recorded by Welsh singer Tom Jones in December 1967. The lyrics were written by Barry Mason, and the music by Les Reed, who also contributed the title and theme of the song. It earned Reed and Mason the 1968 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. Music and lyrics Although the song is a soulful number set in triple metre, the underlying genre may be considered to be a power ballad, rising to a pitch of A4 on the final note. Produced by Peter Sullivan, Jones' version features a big-band accompaniment set to a flamenco rhythm. Flamenco was a surprising choice, since there is no reference to Spain anywhere in the song. There are similarities to the plots of the operas Carmen by French composer Georges Bizet and Pagliacci by Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo. In Carmen, Don José stabs the eponymous Romani woman to death when she tells him she is leaving him for the bullfighter, Escamillo. In Pagliacci, Canio stabs both his adulterous wife, Nedda, and her lover, Silvio, to death. The song tells the story of a man who passes his girlfriend's window and sees her inside making love to another man. He waits outside all night, and then confronts her in the morning, only to have her laugh in his face. He stabs her to death, and then waits for the police to come break down the door and arrest him. The lyrics unfold from the killer's point of view, and are filled with his, often contradictory, emotions. He speaks of Delilah in possessive terms, but also refers to himself as her "slave." He asks his dead girlfriend to "forgive" him, but still clearly sees himself as having been wronged by her. When Jones performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show, in 1968 the censors (unsuccessfully) attempted to insist that the line "At break of day when the man drove away" be changed to "At break of day I was still 'cross the way", as the original version implied he had spent the night with Delilah. Jones later described the proposed change as "such bullshit".