His stock response to the rare hater who comes forward, he says, is simply to point out "it's not up to us. I just thought it was a cool song I wrote," says Higgenson, whose simple, plainspoken songs for and about girls definitely tilt more towards the "pop" side of the pop-punk spectrum and therefore make it tough to accuse the T's of "selling out" for getting an acoustic tune on the radio. "I thought it was good, but I didn't know it would be as big as it was. "Hey There Delilah" actually dates from the group's last Fearless record, 2005's All That We Needed, but was tacked onto Every Second Counts for its obvious, teen-girl-melting hit potential. They'd released three albums on Fearless before Every Second Counts, last year's debut for major label Hollywood Records, became a long-fused sleeper hit on the enduring popularity of the singles "Hate (I Really Don't Like You)" and "Delilah." The T's paid their dues for three post-graduation years playing "everywhere we could around Chicago – basements, backyard parties, church basements, VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) halls, anything we could get" – before signing with punk-rock indie Fearless Records in 2000. In fact, the band's been slogging it out for a decade, its origins dating back to Higgenson's high-school friendship with guitarist Dave Tirio. "Hey There Delilah" has also hatched the misunderstanding that the Plain White T's are one of the "overnight" success stories ("It's been a long night," says Higgenson) that the entertainment media rather enjoy propagating. That girl, Delilah, is suing him for using her name in the song and she's got a restraining order against him.' People are making up their own stories. "The song came on in this bar and our drummer's girlfriend was there and she heard some guy talking next to her, just overheard him saying: `I hear the singer in this band is screwed, man. "Everyone has their own ideas about who Delilah is," laughs the slight Higgenson, sitting atop an equipment case marked "Steve Earle" in one of the MuchMusic hive's hallways before a TV appearance yesterday afternoon and an evening show at the Guvernment. But for the record, he's not stalking her or anything. She is indeed a real person, yes, a comely friend of Higgenson's who was promised a song in her honour (smooth, that) upon their meeting years ago. Wild theories apparently abound as to the singer/songwriter's relationship with the Delilah in question. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for a few weeks this past July. Tom Higgenson has been getting a lot of this since he and the rest of Chicago's Plain White T's – bad grammar there, but it's too late to quibble with misused apostrophes now – watched their rather likeable summer ballad "Hey There Delilah" take over the No. You know you've accomplished something as a songwriter when your music becomes the stuff of popular musing and wild stories about your own life start trickling back to you.
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