In 1997 the world was shook by a pop trio of blonde brothers (who many thought were a pop trio of blonde sisters). The band defined an era with one word — if you can call it that — by delivering the iconic track “MMMBop.” The brothers, whose haircuts have become more reasonable over the years, are back and they’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the group’s formation. Isaac, Taylor, and Zach Hanson have dusted off their “mmm’s” and “bop’s” and are prepared to take us on an infectious pop journey to the epicenter of nostalgia.
Hanson performs at St. Andrews Hall on Friday, Oct. 6. Doors open at 7 p.m.; 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; 313-961-8961; saintandrewsdetroit.com; Tickets are $87.73.
They performed songs from their critically acclaimed Middle of Everywhere Greatest Hits album
Hanson’s lengthy set featured “Already Home,” and it was followed by “Waiting For This” and “Where’s The Love.” The crowd was loving them the entire time, and their upbeat show was the ultimate throwback concert with 90’s songs as “Look at You,” “Weird,” “Madeline,” and “I Will Come to You,” among others.
Their live rendition of their single “I Was Born” was optimistic, fun and liberating. They continued with “A Minute Without You” and “Get The Girl Back.”
Most importantly, Hanson was able to take their fans on a musical journey by performing songs from their 25-year career in the industry.
“MMMBop” was the fan-favorite tune, which felt like the national anthem for the Saturday night in Times Square. Equally fun was their radio hit “If Only,” and they concluded their set with such tunes as “Fired Up” and In The City,” where they left their loyal listeners and fans wanting for more. Fortunately for the hardcore fans, Hanson returned for an encore.
The Verdict
Overall, Hanson rocked the PlayStation Theater in Times Square in New York City, as they brought their audience back to simpler times. Their harmonies were spot-on and soulful. The band of brothers (Isaac, Taylor and Zac) interacted well with the New York audience, and made them feel like they were in their living rooms, serenading them to their catchy songs. They are worth seeing live whenever they are in town. Their live show garnered an A rating.
Tulsa-based pop-rock trio Hanson have announced the Oct. 27 release of their long-awaited new holiday album “Finally It’s Christmas” (3CG Records / S-Curve Records). Album cover art provided
On the heels of their 25th anniversary celebration with sold-out concerts in Europe, Australia and Latin America on their “Middle Of Everywhere” world tour and greatest hits compilation release, Tulsa-based pop-rock trio Hanson have announced the Oct. 27 release of their long-awaited new holiday album “Finally It’s Christmas” (3CG Records / S-Curve Records).
The release is timed to mark the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma band’s first yuletide release, “Snowed In.”
The new Christmas album, which features four original tracks, and eight updated classics, reunites the band with S-Curve President Steve Greenberg who originally signed the band to Mercury Records in 1996, as well as co-producer and writing partner Mark Hudson (Aerosmith, Ozzy Osborne, Ringo Starr) who also collaborated on “Snowed In.” Adding to the production pedigree of the release are engineer and mixer CJ Eiriksson (Jacks Mannequin, U2, Phish, Matchbox 20), with the title and select tracks mixed by veteran chart-topper Tom Lord-Alge (U2, Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, The Wallflowers), according to a news release.
In contrast with the sentimentality of many Christmas releases, the Hanson brothers – Isaac, Taylor and Zac – bring an organic rock ‘n’ roll energy to the album, featuring iconic favorites like Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas,” Stevie Wonder’s “Someday At Christmas” and Aretha Franklin’s “Winter Wonderland,” along with a re-imagined arrangement of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” and lively renditions of modern classics like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas.”
The album’s original songs, like the title track and “’Til New Years Night” are billed as bursting with “celebratory energy, layered vocal arrangements calling to mind the Beach Boys and British invasion-era guitar riffs,” while “Peace On Earth” highlights the band’s earnest lyrics and stalwart melodies. The album is not entirely without holiday sentimentality, closing with a rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” with guitarist Isaac singing lead on the Judy Garland classic, and a soulful gospel medley of two well-known songs from the Christmas hymnal, “Go Tell It On The Mountain” and “Joy To The World.”
Here is the track listing for “Finally It’s Christmas”:
1. Finally, It’s Christmas
2. A Wonderful Christmas Time
3. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
4. Til New Years Night
5. Please Come Home
6. Someday At Christmas
7. Joy To The Mountain
8. Jingle Bells
9. Happy Christmas
10. All I Want For Christmas
11. Winter Wonderland
12. Blue Christmas
13. Peace On Earth
14. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
As previously reported, Hanson has been celebrating the band’s 25th anniversary as well as the 20th anniversary of the its debut release “Middle Of Nowhere” – which includes the iconic single “MMMBop” that introduced the group to the world – in style throughout 2017, with a world tour, several TV appearances, induction into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and a new music video “I Was Born” featuring 11 of the band member’s 12 children.
“I Was Born” is the first track on Hanson’s celebratory two-disc compilation “Middle of Everywhere – The Greatest Hits,” which was released on Sept. 8.
“Finally It’s Christmas” is available for pre-order as just the album or as part of limited edition packages at hanson.net/store.
It’s hard to believe but boy band Hanson has been around for 20 years. SUPPLIED
Isaac Hanson of MMMBop fame only has to look at the 12 offspring he and younger brothers Taylor, 34, and Zac, 31, have produced since first shooting to fame two decades ago as teen pop trio Hanson to realize there could be – wait for it – Hanson: The Next Generation.
“I look at my kids and go, ‘Wow – I was this age and my parents were like, It’s cool. Go for it,’says Hanson, 36.
“My oldest son is 10 and he’s a very charismatic young person. I was only a year older than him when my brothers and I started singing together. He’s also musically skilled, too. He’s already picked up the guitar and is playing so who knows? If they decide to be a band, I hope they come up with something clever ’cause often the idea is, ‘Oh yeah, Hanson Jr.'”
Isaac talked to 24 Hours from Atlanta before Hanson’s 25th anniversary tour stops at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall on Wednesday (Oct. 4) and Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre on Oct. 18.
Hanson also returns for two Christmas shows on Nov. 24-25 at Toronto’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre in support of their new holiday album, Finally It’s Christmas, due Oct. 27.
Do you guys have any trepidation about crossing the border into Canada after calling homegrown boy Justin Bieber’s music “chlamydia of the ear,” during an Australia radio show interview in June?
We did get a little bit [of push back]. Look, I think Justin is a talented guy. I think he’s gotten a lot of PR for a lot of things that have nothing to do with his music and that’s unfortunate. We were kidding around. I was not meaning for it to be taken nearly as seriously as it was. The unfortunate thing about that was before we went on the air, there was a conversation going on about the chlamydia epidemic amongst koalas and then one thing led to another. And then when Zac was like, ‘Oh, well, I don’t really like Justin’s music all that much.’And then I, trying to make a joke, [said that]. It’s not something I want to take to my grave.
How dedicated do your Canadian fans remain?
We’ve had so much continued engagement and enthusiasm from the Canadian fans as a whole. I mean, it really very much feels like home in so many ways. Canadian fans are fantastic. It’s impossible to complain.
It’s been 25 years since Hanson was formed and 20 years since your major label debut, 1997’s Middle Of Nowhere featuring MMMBop, was released. How have you guys changed?
I think we’re the best band we’ve ever been for sure. I mean 20 years into it, we sure as hell better be. I think we have a lot of fun playing these shows. It’s such a great combo of new and old faces coming out to see the shows. We’ve got everything from fans that are younger than our first record to fans that have been with us from the very beginning. It’s really pretty cool.
And what about the passage of time?
When we kind of said, ‘Hey, you know we’re 25 years old [as a group],’I think it set a little bit of shock to the system. I think there were a lot of fans that were just kind of, ‘Wait, a second. It’s been 25 years since the beginning.’It’s a really cool thing. Very few people get to this kind of thing for 25 years. We had to stick a stake in the ground and claim it. There’s something about reaching certain milestones where you look around and go, ‘Wow, okay.'”
Do you feel older?
What I will say is I very much feel like the same person from my 16-year-old self to now. And maybe part of that is unlike most 16-year-olds, I’ve literally been doing the same job since I was 16. So it has a certain level of consistency.
Tom Petty has been a huge inspiration, his musical genius has inspired us over and over to push our own music to new heights. Following his tragic passing we could not take the stage without sharing one of our most beloved Tom Petty songs, Wildflowers. The heavenly choir has never sounded as good as it does today.
Before the Jonas Brothers, another popular band of brothers stole the hearts of fans and took over MTV’s TRL. Hanson may have released their biggest hit “MMMBop” a year before the countdown show premiered, but they were still relevant enough to host an episode in 1998. The band took questions from fans, discussed their favorite music videos and sported some very ’90s outfits.
New York – Zac Hanson from the Grammy-nominated pop-rock group Hanson chatted with Digital Journal about their upcoming shows at the PlayStation Theater, their new Greatest Hits album and Christmas album.
On September 30, they will be performing at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square, New York. “We love playing New York. We have great fans in that part of the country, so it’s always a good time,” Zac said. “This is a long tour that started a while ago in Europe, and then Australia, and South America, and New Zealand. Playing in New York is like playing in your hometown. We have so much history there.”
“Get ready!” Zac told their New York fans. “Bring your party hats. We look at this whole tour as an anniversary celebration, like a big birthday party. Come ready to dance and have a good time. We’ll be doing that.”
Hanson released their Middle of Everywhere Greatest Hits album, which garnered a glowing review from Digital Journal. “We wrote ‘MMMBop’ when I was eight, and that was when we started. It doesn’t matter when a song was written. A great song can connect with people. I think about my youngest daughter Lucille, and I played her the song ‘Lucille’ by Little Richard, just for the name connection, and it’s amazing how my one-year-old loves that song, and she responds to the rhythm, its groove and the melodies.”
He added that the song “I Was Born” is about a perspective on life. “It shares some of my favorite connections, and it has allowed us to take risks and see our dreams realized, and the crazy amount of work it takes to have that happen, as well as the ups and the downs,” he said.
The band will also be releasing their Finally It’s Christmas holiday album on October 27. “We are making music we hope that will be relevant to people. We loved making that first Christmas album, and then we decided it was the right time to revisit that. 20 years seemed like it was the right time to do a Christmas album again. We reunited with longtime friend and collaborator Mark Hudson, who produced our first Christmas album with us. That was awesome. It was a family reunion in a Christmas way.”
On November 28 and 29, they will be returning to the PlayStation Theater in New York for their Christmas shows, to promote their holiday album. “The Christmas shows are something we’ve never done before,” he admitted.
Regarding the key to longevity in the music business, Zac said, “We are stubborn.” “For better or worse, we’ve made a lot of choices over the years that have really been about the idea of longevity. We thought early on about everything we did. Now, everything is peer to peer marketing, and everything is about building your brand.”
For aspiring singer-songwriters and bands, Zac offers the following advice: “There’s a tendency for people to write lyrics and melodies that are catchy, but if you don’t go deeper, and express what you are feeling right now, and your perspective on the world into your music, you won’t have that lasting experience, where people come back to your song year after year and discover the meaning.”
Zac listed British songstress Adele as his dream female collaboration choice in music. “There are a lot of amazing artists out there. Adele is amazing. I’ve never met her, but she is super-talented,” he said.
Digital transformation of the music industry
On the impact of technology in the contemporary music scene, Zac said, “There are different perspectives that you have to look it. As a fan, technology is amazing with Spotify and Amazon Music. They allow you to explore is incredible. It’s almost like a drug that you are addicted to. As an artist, I think technology has made it more difficult to make lasting connections. It allows you quickly to become long-term fans, but it can be hard to convert people than it was when we started 25 years ago. You don’t have that same experience of going to the record store, and making the effort to buy the CD, and listen to the full album, and look at the liner notes and the artwork. Technology is a blessing and a curse. We look at it as a challenge, to write music that will grab people. That’s what we are trying to do.”
Hanson
Jiro Schneider
Zac concluded our interview by furnishing his definition of the word success as “Survival.”
For more information on Hanson, their new music and touring schedule, check out their official homepage.
It’s a Saturday night, and the NorVa pulses with a 20 year old nostalgia: a shimmering incantation of adolescent girls in baby doll t’s, blue jeans and roll-on body glitter, a palpable sense of innocent longing, of late night summer diary scrawls with that one song stuck on repeat.
Then, in what feels like a blink, the girls in glitter are all grown up, and the boys from the boombox nights of their youth are DADS now. But somehow after all the years, the monotonous day jobs, and the face smack of real life beyond the teen magazine quiz results, here they are again before us! Still making great music, still singing the songs we came of age to and writing new songs that feel enough like the old ones that they trick us into feeling forever 14.
To be frank, reviewing Hanson’s concert last Saturday night came with quite a bit of bias. These boys were the wallpaper of my high school bedroom and the beacons that steered me toward a life of songwriting. I loved them for being the blond black sheep of boy-bands who skipped the choreographed dance routines and wrote the songs themselves. They were the squeaky clean Tulsa, Oklahoma fellas you knew your Mom would offer iced tea to and yet, they were also handsome, sweaty rock stars in pleather pants. So, indeed, I was (and still am) a Hanson fan — so much so that it says so on my car.
“MMMBOP” was Hanson’s first hit single from their 1997 debut album, Middle of Nowhere. 2017 marks 20 year’s since “MMMBOP” hit the airwaves, and 25 years that brothers Isaac, Taylor, and Zac have been playing music together as a band. To celebrate those two significant anniversaries, they decided to release a Best Of album and go on an international tour, both titled Middle of Everywhere, as a throwback to their 1997 debut. I’ll freely admit that while I’ve stayed a fan, I haven’t always kept up to date with the band’s newer releases. But nostalgia does something magical to our brains and our hearts. The moment I heard about the tour, I was instantly jolted into wanting to listen to the old stuff and finally check out the new stuff. Additionally, I was curious to see how this show would measure up to the last time I saw Hanson at the NorVa in 2011. That was a fun but sort of disappointing night due to the medium sized crowd of only mildly enthusiastic mid-late 20s women and their very stoic significant others. But in 2017, its a different world.
Photo credit: Annie Symmes
I attended the sold out concert with my Mom and my best friend Lindsay (who I met in high school and shared a love of Hanson and musicals with). As we walked through the NorVa’s entrance just before the start of the show, the size of the crowd was fairly alarming. I had never seen the NorVa so packed. The merch line was already snaked down the length of the left hand wall, and the floor was packed stretching from the front of the stage to the sound booth. Further into the crowd, we bumped into more friends, all giddy and revved up for the mmm’s and the bops.
The first surprise of the night came in the form of NO OPENER. A full night of Hanson and Hanson alone. We grabbed drinks from the bar and settled on some prime standing real estate toward the back of the crowd, midway between the bar and the stairs to the mezzanine. In only a few minutes, the lights went down and the screaming commenced. Holy Moly, Was this a room of grown ass women or 13 year old girls? Apparently the nostalgia magic had already begun to dance through us.
As the stage filled with light, I witnessed a very small fiasco, as a couple of sound guys rushed in to help the bass player with a cable of some sort. It was only due to my vantage point that I caught this, but it was adorable watching the wide mouthed smile of the bassist as his situation was swiftly resolved. But the first song had already begun without him — oh well!
Hanson opened with a trio of three songs without taking a single pause –the third of which cemented the reality of where we were and who we were there with. The giant 30 something crowd belted out every single word to “Where’s the Love.”
Lindsay and I broke into harmony, my Mom pumped her fist in the air to the chorus, and all was right with the world.
Weaving back and forth between old classics and newer songs, Hanson brought the funky pop rocking fire. Each song pumped full of energy and fun, and if there was any question as to whether Hanson might have lost their touch, they deemed themselves more worthy with every decibel burst of applause.
The show had a great sense of variety even beyond song choice, due to the guys jumping around to different instruments. Taylor jumped on drums for a song, and Zach played drums on most songs but also rocked rhythm guitar and keys! For one song, all three brothers came to the front of the stage and sweetly sang their ballad “Save Me.”
I was struck by the lyrics in “This Time Around”: “I’m feeling older and I’m wondering why”– which had a very different meaning for me when it was on the radio in 2000. “Get the Girl Back” slayed with a punchy pop beat that made it hard not to do awkward space-constricted dance moves. When the guys finally played “Mmmbop” toward the end of the show, my Mom began shouting “WORLD PEACE!” amidst the giant singalong of the chorus. I laughed at the moment but after the show she explained that, for her, the energy of that moment was what she imagines world peace would feel like. Solid.
For myself and many of the folks I spoke with, our favorite moment ended up being the most acoustic and old school rendition of the night, a front of the stage totally acoustic performance of “Madeline” complete with tambourine and impeccable three part harmony! In reflection, I can’t think of one single pitchy moment of the entire show — which says a lot about how tight and practiced these guys are at singing together.
By the end of the night, Hanson had played 25 songs, plus a two song encore and spent nearly two and a half hours jumping around, shouting to the rafters and throwing their hands in the air with us. It was more than a concert; it was a reminder that all beautiful things don’t have to burn out or quietly fade to nothingness. Some great things actually stay great.
