Re-Listening: Hanson -- Middle of Nowhere
Published Dec. 2, 2008
To understand how Hanson, a three-piece rock band of adorable, underage blue-eyed blondies from Tulsa, Okla., completely ripped up the charts in 1997 with their seminal debut, Middle of Nowhere and their chart-topping sensation "MMMBop," one needs a glimpse of what was going on in 1997 in the realm of pop music.
Grunge had died off. And despite the recent deaths of Tupac and Biggie, full-blown hip-hop still wasn't the mainstream's darling. Music was at a veritable crossroads, and I'm not saying that as a pun to the fact that Eric Clapton dropped an album that year. Rap metal like Korn and Limp Bizkit was starting to trickle onto the scene, and pop country was perpetually making a comeback every few months, as it continues to do.
And of course there was still a little bit of room for bubble gum on the charts, and I'm not talking about the Spice Girls. I'm talking the brothers Hanson.
Face it, these kids were adorable, and the irony of it is that 13-year-old Taylor's voice lightly smacks of Michael Jackson (relax, I'm referring to his Jackson 5 days). Posters of Taylor and 11-year-old Zac (but if I remember correctly, not Isaac, because he was "the ugly one" — see N'Sync's Chris Kirkpatrick) plastered the walls of every American preteen girl's room, as well as at least a hundred creepy, slightly moustached and single 40- to 45-year-old males. Most guys my age hated these guys for the same reason they hated Jonathan Taylor Thomas (who was also making the cover of Bop Magazine about this time): girls like them and not guys that had actually hit puberty.
It was easy to stay away from Hanson in those days, not only out of jealousy, but also out of fear of getting my ass kicked. Now that I actually listen to their album, the problem is, well, these kids can jam.
Some of the songs on the album, like "Where's The Love" and "Lucy" would have been just catchy enough to make it on their own. There are also several well-written slow ballads on the album, including "I Will Come To You," which made it to No. 9 on Billboard in '97.
It's unclear where the border is in terms of who played what on the album, but the liner notes suggest that Hanson definitely did not make this album without adult supervision.
I guess I have every reason to believe that Isaac completely iced that riff in "Lucy," or that none other than the tiny, silky hand of Zac executed the elaborate percussive elements on "MMMBop." But there was some help from some studio musicians on certain tracks. In fact, another set of famous brothers, The Dust Brothers, produced a few tracks on the album. Hear those turntable scratches on "MMMBop"?
But that's all over now. As they put it, "in an MMMBop it's gone." At least, what Hanson was is gone. They're still making albums and touring, and have developed a decidedly harder-edged sound. They've never really made it back into the broader public conscience — maybe because they play a certain type of rock that has been pushed aside in terms of the mainstream, or maybe their bubble-gum sound has forever doomed them to novelty. I'll vouch for the latter.
Despite any great musical endeavors that might befall them in the years to come, they'll never escape the Tiger Beat posters and the prepubescent screeches of that year, the year they saw unrepeatable highs in their fame and vocal ranges: 1997.
Zac, now 23, even said in October that the brothers have thought about making their own albums separately and packaging them together, a la OutKast's Speakerboxx/The Love Below. And, you know what, it could be a Grammy-winning recording, but none of us can truly forget where they really came from.