Hands down one of my favorite Marcus King songs ever.
Earlier this spring, Marcus King released his Rick Rubin-produced album Mood Swings, which is one of King’s most vulnerable projects. While songs like “Save Me,” “Hero,” and “Mood Swings” are easily project standouts, my personal favorite of the entire tracklist is “Delilah.”
I was itching for the single to drop once Marcus King’s bride teased the track on her TikTok at the beginning of 2023, but King would make us wait over a year to get the song in its full glory. Granted, he was playing on the road quite a bit, which scratched the itch. When I thought I couldn’t love the song more, Gabe Lee sang it at a show in January of 2024, noting that he was a co-writer.
Marcus King recently appeared on Bert Kreischer’s Bertcast and dove deeper into how he and Lee penned the tune.
King noted that he and Gabe Lee were paired for a co-writing session. King said that while he was not a fan of co-writes so much, he showed up because he had some great songs come out of these sessions, but they were all hit or miss, depending on how well you got along with those in your session.
When he and Gabe Lee came together, it didn’t even seem as though they would leave the session with a song.
“Sometimes you show up, and the conversation’s not good; you don’t get along, really. And this was the case with Gabe. We showed up, and he was like, ‘Yeah, you know, I don’t really do co-writes, man.’
He was kind of turning his nose up at it, and I was like, ‘Hey man, I’m here for two hours. That’s where they told me to be. So, I’m here, and if you want to write one, we can, but if you don’t, we can just go to lunch. I don’t give a f**k.'”
So we went to lunch, and then we came back, and he was like, ‘Oh, I kind of have this idea.'”
He says that Lee sat down at the piano and started toying with this idea, and after lunch, when the two loosened up around each other, their creative juices were meshing.
“The name ‘Delilah’ just rolled out.”
Sometimes you just need a few beers at lunch to loosen up, and I’m glad they did. They ended up writing during the session instead of just doing a lunch because this song has been one of my favorites since Briley King posted that little snippet.
Lyrically and sonically, it is perfection in my eyes, and the tender love story about getting back home to your lady strikes a chord.
If “Deliah” was the product of a co-write they didn’t want to be at, I’d be curious to see what would come out of one they were jazzed up about. The story starts around the 36-minute mark, but I highly recommend listening to the full episode while you’re here.
“Delilah”
