Tom Jones - Delilah

"Delilah" is a song recorded by Welsh singer Tom Jones in December 1967. The lyrics were written by Barry Mason and Sylvan Whittingham, 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. 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 come to 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, the censors insisted 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 change as "such bullshit". Tom Jones' recording reached No. 1 in the charts of several countries, including Germany and Switzerland. It reached No 2 in the British charts in March 1968 and was the sixth-best selling single of that year. The US Billboard chart records its highest position as 15.