Delilah makes good on date
Hey there, is that Delilah with Plain White T's singer Tom Higgenson? Sure is.
The gal for which Higgenson wrote the group's Grammy-nominated -- and radio-saturated -- "Hey There Delilah" accompanied him on the red carpet Sunday, the conclusion of a story that began five years ago with a crush, a love song and a Grammy promise.
"I told her at first that I had a song about her, which was a lie," Higgenson said Saturday about Delilah DiCrescenzo, the Columbia University student he met through a friend. "There was no song, but I said it was going to be the best song I'd ever written, that it was going to make us famous and you're going to be my date to the Grammys. She had to come to make the story complete."
The two looked friendly enough Sunday as they posed for cameras with the rest of the Villa Park-based band. But it wasn't exactly the romantic date that Higgenson hoped for when he first laid eyes on DiCrescenzo five years ago.
After all, she has a boyfriend now and Higgenson just returned from Europe, the latest of the band's tour stops in support of their 2006 album, "Every Second Counts."
Still, when Higgenson asked her out recently, he says he wasn't looking for a date, just a good time.
"We're just going to have fun. She knows all the guys in the band. We're just excited to be here."
OK, so who is this Delilah we keep hearing about?
She's a track-and-field steeplechase runner and Olympic hopeful training for the 2008 Games and try-out qualifiers later this year. Rumor has it DiCrescenzo had a longtime boyfriend when Higgenson boasted his unwritten love song for her five years ago, and though she was taken aback by "Hey There Delilah" when he finally sent it to her, a relationship never blossomed between the two.
How did he ask her out?
"I just called her up," Higgenson said. "We've been able to talk through the years." They haven't actually seen each other for about a year, but he said he wasn't nervous about asking her. "She had to come; it was meant to be."
And what about people saying this is a date?
For all the Plain White T's fans with "Delilah" ringtones and visions of Higgenson singing to his long-distance love in New York, Sunday's appearance might feel like an appropriate end to a five-year-long love story. And Higgenson doesn't mind. "People are going to say what they're going to say, just as long as they're talking about the band."