How to Play Hey There Delilah on Ukulele in 5 Easy Chords!

How to Play Hey There Delilah on Ukulele

Introduction

In this article today we are going to cover one love song that was famous when it was released and it’s still a tune that many kids from the new generation adore. Hey There Delilah by Plain White T’s is a song about a long-distance relationship, but it is written in a great manner where the author is avoiding all the downfalls and focuses only on the good side of this love story.

This song was the third single from Plain White T’s third album and it was released in May 2006. With around 15 years out, this song gained a lot of popularity and launched this band into their fame.

The following year in 2007, this song reached its peak and climbed the no.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July. It also gained its x4 Platinum status with over 4 million certified sales in the United States only.

And the song is based on and dedicated to a real lady. Based on an old Columbia College Today article, the actual Delilah, a competitive cross-country runner and graduate of Columbia College, by no means dated guitarist and frontman Tom Higgenson, who wrote the now-famous lyrics.

Though Higgenson admitted that the long-distance relationship between the 2 was fiction, he did inform her that he had written a track about her in hopes of impressing her.

All of it appears sort of uncomfortable. However, Delilah, who attended the 2008 Grammys with Tom and the Plain White T’s, mentioned in the same ESPN interview, “If it wasn’t for me, I am certain Tom would’ve been inspired by a unique lady and written an incredible tune about her. So far as I am concerned, I used to be in the appropriate place at the right time and met the appropriate individual — simply the luck of the draw.”

Rhythm and Strums for Hey There Delilah

Rhythm

The song was written in a standard 4/4 time signature and this makes it easy to follow the beat and play along with this song.

Also, if you look at the song structure you will be able to see that it is a pretty simple pop-rock song and that there should be no difficulty for you to nail this tune.

Unfortunately, we cannot go over the beat and scheme of the song because it varies as it goes on, but if you follow the chord diagram that we have below, everything will come clear to you.

Strumming

Similar to the rhythm of this song, the strumming is also pretty easy to perform. It is a regular Down – Up pattern, where you strum the chord once regularly and once muted. So it will be something like this:

Down-Up (Normal) Down-Up(Muted)

And when you transition the chords, you will maintain this same pattern to perform the song right. Of course, it is not all the way with the muted chords, but you will notice where you need to play the chord openly and where to mute it.

Chord Variations

For this song, you will need to play 5 chords on your ukulele and here they are:

C Major, E Minor, A Minor, F Major, and G Major

For some of these chords, we already have guides written on how to press and perform them and you will be able to find the links on the chords above.

So, here is the selection of chords here and how they look in their root position:

And now, we will show you how to play this beautiful song.

Conclusion

We went through several important elements of this song that you need to know and we hope that you will have no problems performing it with all the information we shared with you.

Just make sure that you follow the exact spots of the chords where you need to strum them and you will notice that the song will fall in place.

If you are having any requests for any song that you want us to cover, please let us know in the comment section.

Below in the video, you will be able to find a little bit more complex version of how to play this song on a ukulele with plucking instead of strumming. If you are not a beginner and already above this level, this might be very easy and educative for you!