Plain White T's
Hey There Delilah chords
Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's is a beginner song in D, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (D, F#m, Bm, G, A) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Bridge. 3 of the 5 shapes are open chords and F#m is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 104 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F#m → Bm, once.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F#m
- Key
- Dwith no capo
- Tempo
- 104BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 53 open, 2 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Hey There Delilah
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro♩=104
Verse♩=104
Chorus♩=104
Bridge♩=104
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Hey There Delilah
Hey There Delilah is the fingerpicking song beginners graduate to, because the chords are easy and the pattern is the lesson. No capo: the song is in D, and you get D, F#m, Bm, G and A. The verse opens by alternating D and F#m before closing on Bm, G, A — and the chorus starts on D but moves to Bm instead of F#m, which is the change that gives it a different colour with almost identical finger shapes.
The right hand is a steady thumb-and-fingers roll: thumb on the bass note of the chord, index, middle and ring walking the top three strings. Keep the thumb moving in quarter notes no matter what the fingers do — that pulse is the song. On F#m, resist grabbing the full barre; the small three-string shape at fret 2 is all the picking pattern needs and it changes far faster.
Practise at 80 BPM and loop D to F#m until the thumb note never drops out, then add the Bm and A pair, which is where most people stall and lose the pattern. Keep G and A open and simple rather than reaching for fancy voicings. Only after the picking is perfectly even should you move toward the recorded 104.
How to practise Hey There Delilah
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → F#m (2-4-4-2-2-2, intermediate, needs a barre) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
3 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F#m until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
D → Bm5×D → F#m5×G → A4×A → D3×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Devery section
- F#mIntro, Verse
- BmVerse, Chorus, Bridge
- GVerse, Bridge
- AVerse, Chorus, Bridge
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 62 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 62 → 78 → 94 → 104 BPM. The recorded feel is around 104 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 94 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing Hey There Delilah with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
D F#m Bm G A
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
C# Fm Bbm F# Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
C Em Am F G
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
B Ebm Abm E F#
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Bb Dm Gm Eb F
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 5
A C#m F#m D E
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
Ab Cm Fm C# Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
G Bm Em C D
4 of 5 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Hey There Delilah clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Hey There Delilah turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 4×.
53bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 12×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.