UNDERNEATH: EXPERIENCE TOUR TICKETS $30 on SEPT 30th
Tickets to the Underneath: Experience Tour are on offer for $30 on September 30th! Quantities are limited so if you haven’t already, act fast and grab your tickets today! Sale begins at 10am ET.
*This applies to one-night GA tickets. 2-night passes are $60.
WEEKLY PIC
This week, we return to The Church Studio more than twenty years after our Underneath Acoustic session. This is a perfect way to prepare for the coming Underneath Experience Tour. Looking forward to seeing our HNet members this weekend!
Hanson playing at the Melbourne Zoo in 2019
In 1997, the catchy earworm “MMMbop” by the brother trio Hanson spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. The band members were 16, 14 and 11 years old at the time, but even younger when they wrote it two years prior, and their hit song felt seemed to be a reflection of the optimism and innocence of their youth.
But the upbeat, do-woppy chorus—which is what most people remember about the song—belies how deep the rest of the song actually was. Many millennials are just now learning about the song’s poignant-but-hard-to-make-out lyrics, and hoo boy do they hit hard during the full-on-adult years.
WEEKLY PIC
Rehearsal is fully underway for this series of epic Two Night Stands for the Underneath Experience Tour. Who’s ready? Continue reading
WEEKLY PIC
It was a fast paced NYC week full of fashion nostalgia. We had a great time celebrating with Old Navy right as the feeling of fall made its first appearance.
The band noted that the ’80s and ’90s had a lot of ‘great music’ that inspired and influenced the kind of music they make
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Hanson in 2024 and in the 1990s. Photo:
Mark Sagliocco/Getty; Eric Robert/Sygma/Sygma via Getty
For the members of Hanson, the 1990s are always en vogue.
The band, which consists of brothers Isaac, 43, Taylor, 41, and Zac, 38, shared during the Old Navy & The Cut Host 90s Throwback Party on Monday, Sept. 9, in New York City that they are happy to be known as a ’90s band and to have come up on the music scene during that time.
“I mean, we’re proud of where we’ve come from,” the brothers told PEOPLE. “You never want to live in the past, but your origin is what it is. It’s where you came [from] and there was a lot of great music.”
“Rock bands, pop bands, Hip-Hop, R&B, all happening at once,” they added. “And the way the Top 40 was, it was definitely like a hop. We took No. 1 from Notorious B.I.G. That’s what [the music scene] looked like.”
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The brothers, who started making music in 1992, noted that there “were a lot of things happening in the ’90s,” which “influenced” their music and helped them decide to go “back to the business.” Their experiences eventually culminated in their 1997 album Middle of Nowhere, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 that year and featured the single “MMMBop,” which went on to hit No. 1 internationally.
They shared that they really “admired” artists that “broke in the ’90s” as well, including Spin Doctors and Tonic, so much so that they’ve even worked with other groups of the era.
“We’ve done collaborations with a lot of people we admired in the ’90s,” the brothers recalled, before floating the idea of “a collaboration with the Spin Doctors and with Counting Crows.”
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The brothers previously reflected on their stardom in a 2022 interview with PEOPLE and shared that they felt they were “lucky that we’ve always been a little bit of an anomaly” when it comes to how they came together to form a family band and make music together.
“To be brothers who don’t fight that much and who share a dream, that’s unique,” Zac shared. “We’ve been a band for a long time, and a lot of people go, ‘Wow, you’re normal,’ because the industry has a way of leaving its marks on people. But we just always had a really strong sense of place.”
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Isaac Hanson, Zac Hanson and Taylor Hanson of Hanson perform onstage during Old Navy’s 30th Anniversary Celebration, 94 Reissue Collection Launch and The Cut’s Fall Fashion Issue Event at Webster Hall on Sept. 9, 2024, in N.Y.C.
Bryan Bedder/Getty
While plenty of time has passed since their early careers, one thing has stayed the same: family is still the most important thing to the brothers, who have 15 children among them. They noted that when they put on shows, their children are still at the top of their minds.
“After I finish a show, it’s like, ‘Hold on a second. I’ve got to do an encore, then I’ll call you for the bedtime story,’ ” Isaac shared.
Taylor added, “The job of being a dad is to sacrifice everything you want for that kid. I may be in the middle of meeting some famous musician, but, sorry, I’ve got to call my daughter and talk to her about her day.”
When you think of Hanson, you probably wouldn’t expect the sibling pop trio of “MMMBop” fame to cover a song by a late British folk artist with a passionate cult following. The Hanson brothers have done just that, though, releasing their own version of the 1971 Nick Drake gem “Pink Moon.”
“Pink Moon” is one of two newly recorded tracks that will be featured on an upcoming expanded, 20th anniversary reissue of the group’s 2004 studio album, Underneath. Underneath: Complete will be released on October 4. The collection will feature seven rare recordings from the original album sessions, as well as the aforementioned “Pink Moon” cover. It also will include an updated version of Underneath’s lead single, “Penny & Me.”
“Nick Drake’s hypnotic music made a deep impression on us while we were writing and recording Underneath,” lead singer Taylor Hanson said in a statement. “So much so that ‘Pink Moon’ is referenced in the lyrics of our song ‘Penny and Me.’ As we celebrate the Underneath album’s 20th anniversary, we are thrilled to be able to share our rendition of ‘Pink Moon,’ because by sharing music we love we are also sharing a special part of our own musical story.”
Hanson’s rendition of “Pink Moon” is available now as an advance digital track. The group also has premiered an animated video for the sparsely arranged, introspective song on YouTube.
In a podcast segment posted on Hanson.net, Taylor Hanson discussed what inspired them to record a version of “Pink Moon.”
“A friend of ours [a stylist named Kristen who was touring with Hanson] introduced us to Nick Drake in the year 2000,” he explained. “[She] was playing Nick Drake one time, and we were on the road, [and] I thought, ‘What is that?’ and we just kind of fell in love with it. … [And] in the early 2000s, Nick Drake became just like a cool artist, alongside David Gray, alongside these emerging artists like Travis and Coldplay.”
He continued, “And so, as we were making Underneath, it was really that there was this whole wave of sort of textural, moody, introspective writing [out there]. And, of course, we come from R&B, from Motown … from big arrangements and stuff, and I remember [Kristen] said, ‘You guys should record a song like this.’ … And I said to her, ‘I always hear all the other stuff. It’s really hard to go this simple.’ And it’s literally [taken] 20 years to be able to go this simple.”
As for Drake’s influence on “Penny & Me,” Taylor noted that the 2004 Hanson tune “was written already referencing and knowing and loving Nick Drake.”
“Pink Moon” was the title track of Drake’s third and final studio album, which was released in 1972. Sadly, Nick died by suicide in 1974 at age 26. Although he received very little attention for his music during his life, Drake’s work found a much wider audience when “Pink Moon” was featured in a popular 1999 Volkswagen car commercial.
In another podcast segment posted on the Hanson website, Isaac Hanson said that music video for their version of “Pink Moon” was partly inspired by the Volkswagen ad.
Underneath was Hanson’s fourth studio album, and the group’s first to be recorded for their own independent label, 3CG. The album peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard 200.
Hanson are set to launch a new trek celebrating the 20th anniversary Underneath and the release of the deluxe reissue. the Underneath: Experience Tour 2024 will feature two-night stands in a variety of cities, with the first night featuring an acoustic performance and the second offering an electric show.
The tour kicks off with an October 3-4 engagement in Minneapolis and is mapped out through a November 10-11 stand in Los Angeles. Matthew Sweet and Phantom Planet will open the first and second shows, respectively, at each stop of the trek.
You can check out the full list of tour dates at Hanson.net.
Hanson is marking two decades of independence with “Underneath: Complete,” an expanded deluxe edition re-release due Oct. 4.
The multi-platinum Tulsa pop-rock trio Hanson has released a cover of folk icon Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” and announced a new concert tour.
The song is one of two new recordings taken from a 20th anniversary celebration of the group’s landmark third album, “Underneath.”
After 20 years of releasing music independently on our own 3CG Records, we’re revisiting the album that started it all. Listen to “Pink Moon” from our ‘Underneath: Complete’ album, arriving October 4, 2024.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 09: Isaac Hanson, Taylor Hanson and Zac Hanson of Hanson attend the Old Navy and The Cut Host 90’s Throwback Party at Webster Hall on September 09, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images)
Embed from Getty Images
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 09: Isaac Hanson, Zac Hanson and Taylor Hanson of Hanson perform onstage during Old Navy’s 30th Anniversary Celebration, 94 Reissue Collection Launch, and The Cut’s Fall Fashion Issue Event at Webster Hall on September 09, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for The Cut)