INFORMATION >INTERVIEW
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Q & A with Tom Higgenson - July 23, 2008
Colleen: Does Big Bad World have a different sound than your previous albums or is it the same sort of sound you’ve generally had?
T. Higgenson It’s definitely the same; it’s definitely a Plain White T’s record. It’s not going to throw anybody for a loop. Any fans of the Plain White T’s are definitely going to hear it and it’s going to be the band that they love. But I think the difference is it does sound a little different.
Like I said before, we recorded a lot of the record live, not to a click track or anything, so it’s not going to sound like every other record out. We wanted to kind of set ourselves apart from a lot of other bands that are recording right now and putting out records and everything. In 2008 we wanted to make a record that sounds modern and it sounds like it’s of these times, but could have also been a record that came out 30 years ago. We wanted to have that warmth and that just real sound of real instruments and real people playing those instruments.
A lot of records now they sound so perfect that it’s like okay, I don’t know if a band played this or if robots played it; it’s so perfect and everything sounds so crisp. We definitely wanted it to feel like a record that five guys actually performed in a room and played together.
And I think we really succeeded in that by doing it live and by not fixing every little thing that we heard that could have been a little bit more perfect; we left it a little bit loose. There’s no auto tune on the vocals; we just sang it and sang it until it sounded great.
So it definitely is going to stand out from our other records and sound different from I think a lot of other records that are coming out right now. But it will definitely be Plain White T’s and it’s going to sound like the kind of songs that our fans want to hear.
Colleen So, Big Bad World is a song on the new album, and how did you choose it to become the album title as well?
T. Higgenson Well that was one of the later songs written for the record. Throughout all the writing and as we were getting close to recording I was thinking about okay, shoot, what’s the name of this album and what’s going to be the first track. I was thinking about that constantly, and then when I wrote the song Big Bad World it has this really catchy beat and it’s an upbeat song. The first line of the song is, “It’s a big bad world.” And then after I wrote the song I was like, “Wait a minute; that’s a good first song.” That would be a nice way to start the album. That’s the first line, “It’s a big bad world we’re doing what we can.” It just seemed like wow, okay, this is a nice way to begin this album.
And then the next thought was, “Big bad world; wait a minute that sounds like a good name for the album.” Because a lot of the songs actually have a little bit more of a universal theme, and even the names of the songs. There’s a song called Natural Disaster, which is going to be the first single. There’s a song called Sunlight, there’s obviously a song called Meet Me in California, a song called Big Bad World. All of these songs, even the names themselves, are like these worldly things, things that happen in the world. So it just kind of made sense okay Big Bad World that should be the name of this group of songs.
Colleen: Are there going to be any songs on the album that are like Hey There Delilah, for example, an acoustic song since that’s not normally the sound you have?
T. Higgenson Well actually, Colleen, on every one of our albums there is an acoustic song. On our first record, Stop, there’s a song called Lonely September, which is very acoustic based. On All That We Needed that was when we originally put out Hey There Delilah, and then on Every Second Counts there was Write You a Song that was pretty much all acoustic.
Colleen: So there’s going to be one?
T. Higgenson Yes, there is definitely going to be. There’s a song called One, Two, Three, Four that is I think going to stay mostly acoustic, a very pretty love song that I think people will love in the same way that it’s going to sit in the same kind of ground that Delilah was at. I think a lot of people will love the song and hopefully sing it to their girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever.
Colleen: Why did you pick Natural Disaster as the first single off the album?
T. Higgenson Because it’s the bomb! No, I’m just kidding. I don’t know. We all liked it a lot. With Delilah being such a big song we didn’t want to come out with another acoustic or a ballad right away to kind of limit ourselves or to dig ourselves into a hole. We really wanted to come back out and show people like hey remember us--yes, we rock too, because obviously a lot of our songs are more in the rock world than the acoustic kind of a sound.
And Natural Disaster is very immediate, right off the bat it’s lots of energy, it’s fun. We’re releasing the single in the summer, and it definitely sounds like a summer song. I just think it’s all of the bands favorite songs on the album, so everything just kind of made sense to go with that one.
