Better Than Hoobastank Must Have Been Trademarked

Mind if we dance with your dates?

According to the Billboard Hot 100, "Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's is the reigning No. 1 single in the U.S.A. Sounding like a cross between Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)", James Blunt's "Beautiful" and, uh, the verses from Wheatus's "Teenage Dirtbag", this charmer has apparently weaseled its way onto the summer playlists of America's suburban 12-18 set, dislodging personal fave "Umbrella" (ella, ella, ella...ay) from the top of the charts.

Now this song isn't a crime against humanity or anything: it's the usual type of breezy trifle that succeeds by placing a teenager's emotional palette in high relief, removing all traces of subtlety and complexity. Imagine if someone re-staged Romeo and Juliet to run half an hour with commercial breaks and you pretty much have the basic DNA of every doe-eyed-boy-with-an-acoustic-guitar hit ever made. From a career/financial perspective, it's too bad for (the?) Plain White T's that "Delilah" didn't hit it big in time for prom/graduation season when it could have built some real summer-dominating momentum. Now instead of becoming the signature track of the Class of 2007, it's probably going to end up in that Fastball/Semisonic "oh, yeah that song" purgatory. (Word to your moms - "Closing Time" was ill.)

None of the above paragraph constitutes an endorsement of "Hey There Delilah" on my part; I find the song mystifyingly awful and yet another totemic reminder that my generation's heyday as pop tastemakers pretty much peaked with, uh, N'Sync and Korn. I'm just saying that as a phenomenon/cultural signifier, I can appreciate What's Going On Here. I'm not Down With It Or Anything.

A closer inspection of the lyrics, broken down point by point:

• "What's it like in New York City?": Ah, the New York City reference. Our first clue that "Delilah" has fled small-town Nowheresville, leaving behind, whether by accident or design, Mr. Plain White T. The initial Big Apple namecheck is followed up a few lines later with "Times Square can't shine as bright as you" - a safe generic landmark universalizing the song for kids from Toledo. It's a 50/50 bet whether or not Mr. Plain White T actually visited NYC prior to penning this song.
• "I'm right there if you get lonely/Give this song another listen" Ah, the ol' song that knows it's a song trick. The key to a lot of pop songs is the "I wish some boy would say that to me" factor; by acknowledging the fact that this song was written expressly for "Delilah" in the lyrics, Mr. Plain White T makes the connection explicit. He wrote a song for "Delilah" and now Teenage Girl is listening to it on Z100 in her PT Cruiser. The metaphysical ramifications of this situation boggle the mind.
• "Oh it's what you do to me" 4x in the chorus: See also: John Mellencamp, "Hurt So Good".
• "Someday I'll pay the bills with this guitar": Another meta-moment, as the listener assumes that No. 1 Hit Record = Bills Paid With Guitar.
• "I'd write it all/Even more in love with me you'd fall": The only really embarrassing lyrical construction devised to fit the song's inane "moon/June/spoon" rhyme scheme. One feels that if Mr. Plain White T had availed himself of a rhyming thesaurus for five minutes, he could have come up with a tighter lyric, like "We'll have the life we knew we would/My word is good". Or something.
• "Our friends would all make fun of us/And we'll just laugh along because we know/That none of them has felt this way": Left unsaid is "Of course you, Listener, know exactly what I'm talking about, even if no one else understands." Teens (like everybody else) like to feel that they are the center of the universe, and this naked appeal to their emotional narcissism is always a deft little touch.
• "Two more years and you'll be done with school": Ah, "Delilah" has left because she's in college. This is also the point where those of you older than 22 years of age who really like this song can go hang your heads in shame. Unless you think Mr. Plain White T means grad school.

A final note: Plain White T's is pretty much the worst band name I have ever heard, outside of The Music (who apparently learned about the importance of Google only after printing up the t-shirts). Really, they should have called themselves The Expiration Dates or something. The most frustrating thing about the name is that it makes use of the possessive apostrophe nigh impossible. Plain White T's'? Plain White T's's? Either way, you look like an idiot for trying.

Anyway it seems that Plain White T's are already gearing up for the inevitable package tour with Gym Class Heroes and Sum 41; text me if you want to catch their July 29th show at Great Adventure: