Music critic Josh Tyrangiel called it "an intimate love song that's damn near universal" Tyrangiel praised the Plain White T's for managing to make another "aching guy reaching out to distant girl song feel fresh", singling out singer Tom Higgenson's otherwise imperfect voice and "nasal delivery the nearly-comic sincerity of the lyrics seem completely genuine". Time magazine named "Hey There Delilah" one of The 10 Best Songs of 2007, ranking it number seven. As well at 2:26 where the yellow cab in the background, while blurred, appears not to have the "NYC TAXI" decals that are found on the front doors of NYC yellow cabs. However, a fair amount of the scenes, if not all of them, used to depict the Delilah in New York were actually filmed in Chicago, the most prominent evidence can be found at 1:35 and 1:44 where Delilah boards what appears to be either a 2600 or a 3200-series Chicago "L" train. In a split-screen, it shows Delilah, played by model Melissa McNelis, who attends college in New York City. The only other instruments are the strings provided by Eric Remschneider, who does not appear in the video. The other band members are not playing in the song. It features the band's lead singer, Tom Higgenson, singing the song while the band members are in another room behind him. It has sold over 4,000,000 digital copies in the US alone. Since its release, "Hey There Delilah" has been covered by many artists worldwide in one form or another. The song ended 2007 as the year's 14th biggest-selling single in the UK. From July 3 through July 28, 2007, it was the most played song on radio and the most downloaded song on the US iTunes Music Store. 1 entry for Hollywood Records and Disney Music Group. In 2007, over one year after the song's release, it became the band's first hit in the United States, eventually reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in July, marking the first Hot 100 No. Plain White T's released the song in May 2006 as the third single from their third studio album All That We Needed. "Hey There Delilah" is written in the key of D major, with a tempo of 104 beats per minute in common time.
I didn't know how to be polite but, you know, ditch him." There was pressure to live up to this ideal. Another part of me wants to cower and say it's not. Part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs that it's about me. "When I'm at the gym, it's playing when I'm at the pool, it's playing. About the actual writing, Higgenson said: "Because I wasn't with Delilah, I had to imagine, 'If I was with this girl, what would I want to tell her?'" In late 2004, Higgenson brought DiCrescenzo a disc with the finished song.ĭiCrescenzo stated she found it difficult to deal with the popularity of a song written about her. But I thought it was smooth." DiCrescenzo turned him down, as she was dating somebody else at the time, but kept in touch with Higgenson.
Higgenson stated: "I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, I told her, 'I have a song about you already.' Obviously, there was no song. The song was written by frontman Tom Higgenson after meeting Delilah DiCrescenzo, a nationally ranked American steeplechase and cross country runner, through a mutual friend around 2002. The band's fourth album, Every Second Counts, has "Hey There Delilah" as a bonus track with a string section written and performed by Eric Remschneider augmenting the original recording. And for a song that had no expectations riding on it, it set a new standard for sure.The song was recorded and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid in North Hollywood, Los Angeles. What really makes the song a classic is the fact that it just has vocals accompanied by guitar, that's all. Though the song did not manage to impress the OG Delilah, she did attend the 2008 Grammys with the band. It was only later that the listeners came to know that the song was penned by the frontman of Plain White T's Tom Higgenson for Delilah DiCrescenzo, a cross country runner, in hopes to impress her and otherwise, the whole song was a work of fiction. Soon, it became one of the best songs of the year and became a double 2008 Grammy Award nominee too.
This beautiful romantic ballad by American rock band Plain White T's topped the charts in the US on Jtwo full years after it was released. Compliment the dark clouds that seem to be a permanent feature of the sky nowadays with Hey There Delilah.