Still strong after 'Delilah'
Plain White T's don't feel heat after global hit
Sometimes it's not hard to do the math when you're making a new album, especially when you're dealing with the number 1. If you write a hit song that tops the charts everywhere from the United States to Sweden to Slovenia, you follow it with a confection cast from the same cake pan, right?
Not if you're Tom Higgenson, lead singer and songwriter of the Chicago-based quintet the Plain White T's.
"People think I'm in my bedroom trying to write another song like 'Hey There Delilah,' but I'm not," Higgenson says of the acoustic ballad that scored two Grammy nominations and galvanized Top 40 radio and iTunes last summer, two years after its initial release. "I didn't want to do the same thing again. How are you gonna compete with that?"
The Plain White T's don't even try on their new album, "Big Bad World," out Sept. 23 on Hollywood Records. In a season flush with bold-face releases in hip-hop (T.I., Nelly), R&B (Ne-Yo, Jennifer Hudson), and even alt-country (Lucinda Williams, Ray LaMontagne), "Big Bad World" leads the pack for anticipated pop albums this fall. It's the band's first release since the unexpected success of "Hey There Delilah," and you'd think the heat is on.
"Everyone tells me that, but I didn't feel anything different with this album," Higgenson says. "With every album, you want to outdo yourself, so I don't think I felt pressure from anyone except myself."
With "Big Bad World," the Plain White T's, who play at Tsongas Arena on Oct. 29, lose the punk-pop sound of its peers for a more retro vibe. Recorded live on vintage equipment partly in a Malibu, Calif., studio, the album hardly sounds like their previous three. This time out the band - which also includes guitarists Dave Tirio and Tim Lopez, bassist Mike Retondo, and drummer De'Mar Hamilton - is more indebted to the Beatles than Jimmy Eats World.
The group's more pronounced interest in jangly pop from the 1950s and '60s works wonders in a powder keg of a little ditty called "1, 2, 3, 4" (no relation to Feist's million-dollar baby).
Intentional or not, the song shares DNA with "Delilah," mostly in the buoyant acoustic guitar accompaniment and Higgenson's earnest, boy-next-door vocals. The chorus, lush with sun-kissed harmonies from the Crosby, Stills & Nash school, is cotton candy, a sweet bit of wordplay that echoes the song title: "There's only one thing/ To do/ Three words/ For you." What follows will keep teenage girls warm this winter: "I love you."
Higgenson says he got the idea for the song from a reliable source. "I was in the back of a taxi thinking about how [John] Lennon and [Paul] McCartney wrote 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' " he says. "That song is so brilliant, simple, and perfect. And I wanted to write something like that."
He wrote almost 30 songs for "Big Bad World" but gradually whittled the list down with his bandmates, producer, and A&R guy. "Everybody pretty much agreed on the top 15 songs," he says. They ended up with a lean album, 10 songs right at 34 minutes, with nary a clunker in the mix. "Natural Disaster," the new first single, has already racked up more than 185,000 listens on the band's MySpace page.
If that doesn't ignite on radio (and here's betting 50 bucks it will), there's always "That Girl," a slice of '50s drive-in rock full of hand claps, tambourines, and exclamations of "do-do-do" and "ba-ba-ba." Once again, Higgenson has penned a chorus tailored to tangle in your brain like taffy, even if it's a bit risqué for the band's core fanbase: "Do-do-do/ You wanna be on top/ Or on the b-b-bottom/ Don't make me stop/ 'Cause I kno-o-ow/ I'm in l-l-love with you, girl."
If "Delilah" didn't change Higgenson's artistic priorities, it at least gave him new songwriting fodder. "Natural Disaster" chronicles an encounter he couldn't have imagined a few years ago.
"The song opens with me singing, 'She said she saw me on TV/ This girl's a legend in the late-night scene,' " Higgenson says. "I guess that wouldn't have happened without 'Delilah,' because she wouldn't have seen me on TV before that. I had to ask myself, 'Does this girl like me because of "Hey There Delilah" or does she think I'm cute?' "
Plain White T's play at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell on Oct. 29. "Big Bad World" will be released Sept. 23. 