EW.com Music Mix

If you’d told me yesterday that I would like the video for Hanson’s new single, “Thinkin’ Bout Something,” then I would have said, “I’m fairly sure that’s not true, because I don’t particularly care for them.” And if you’d tried to persuade me otherwise by saying that the clip pays homage to the Ray Charles sequence from the Blues Brothers then I would have suggested that that actually makes it less likely I’m going to enjoy it. And if you’d added that the video also features Weird Al Yankovic playing tambourine in a sexually suggestive fashion then I would have testily remarked upon how this whole conversation was a complete, and rather inexplicable, waste of my valuable time.

But I would have been wrong! The video is a delight, partly because the song itself is a delicious, catchy slice of pop-soul, and partly because some considerable effort has clearly gone into recreating the Blues Brothers scene. For a second, I really thought that was the great Steve Cropper on guitar. Weird Al’s gyrations I could do without, but there you go.

Anyway, check out the video—which is from their June 8-released CD Shout it Out—and then take a look at the relevant movie clip, which you’ll find after the break. Compare, contrast, and tell us what you think!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5V-6yCbpg&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Zap2It

When we first heard that “American Idol” contestant Siobhan Magnus has a Hanson tattoo — a group whose hit “MMMBop” came out when she was all of 7-years-old — we just put it down as another one of those things that makes her the quirky gal that she is.

Now we think she might be wise beyond her years.

Turns out the Hanson brothers (Isaac, Talor and Zach) have a new video out called “Thinking ‘Bout Somethin'” and, well, it doesn’t actually suck. At all.

Plus, they got Weird Al Yankovic to to participate, which is always a plus.

HitFix

We love the fact that history is looking very positively at Hanson, whom some critics dismissed as a just another boy band when the three boys first appeared in the mid-‘90s. “MMMBop” routinely shows up on best pop singles of all time lists, as it rightfully should. (The notoriously snooty Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll named it best single of the year in 1997).

The three brothers, Isaac, Taylor and Zac, debuted a new video today on Myspace for the apostrophe-challenged “Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’,” the first single from the trio’s forthcoming album, “ Shout It Out.”

The clip replicates a scene in “The Blues Brothers,” (hence the ever-present shades) where their music causes a spontaneous outburst of dancing in the streets—now known as a flashmob. Hanson begins playing the tune, which sounds like it belongs on Stax Records with its horns and jubilant beats—in a music store in downtown Tulsa and as the sounds pour forth, 300 locals break into dance. Among the locals? Two of Taylor Hanson’s kids. Tell me you don’t feel old now…

Watch the video a few times and you’ll catch new stuff each time: Who’s playing tambourine? (Hint: he looks very different than how you’re used to seeing him). Also check out who the hippie dude playing the bass is.
Just for fun, after the embed for the “Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’,” we embedded our go-to clip when we need to go to our happy place: as my fellow fans will know, “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” occasionally opens with a musical number, often with puppets and Bondage Boy. Here, Ferguson, Wavy the the Alligator and a few friends perform an absolutely joyous version of “MMMBop.” It’s guaranteed to make your day a little brighter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYfl_XDGsPg&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’

HANSON | MySpace Music Videos

Student Life

Cadenza returns to our series “What Ever Happened To…?” chronicling the triumphs and misadventures of the stars of our youth. This week: Frankie Muniz of “Malcolm in the Middle.”

He might still only be 5 feet 5 inches and 120 pounds, but make no mistake; Frankie Muniz is all grown up. He ditched his acting career a few years ago to focus on his new passion—open-wheel auto racing. You know, like he’s a badass at 200 miles per hour. Oh, and when he’s not racing cars, he’s a drummer in a rock band. In sum, “Malcolm in the Middle” is orders of magnitude cooler than you. And to answer your first question: Yes, he still looks like Malcolm, even at 24, but now he has a mustache, in case you need nightmare-fodder.

But we should put his achievements in perspective before getting carried away. Frankie races in the Champ Car Atlantic Series, which is like the Triple-A league of formula racing. Last season he finished a respectable ninth place out of 20 drivers, which is more impressive considering he had wrist surgery that sidelined him for the final three races of the season.

Muniz’s dedication to the circuit was incredible. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he only spent about 40 days of the past year at home with his then-fiancé, a New Orleans hairdresser named Jamie Gandy to whom he got engaged when he was 19 and she was 25. But his racing days might be over, as the league announced last month that it is on hiatus, citing “the downturn in the global economy.” Muniz might have to take his No. 77 Team Stargate Worlds car elsewhere. Maybe he can make room for it in his garage next to the Jetta from “The Fast and the Furious.”
MCT Campus

But a break from racing will give Muniz a chance to pursue another love: music—specifically, drumming with his recently formed band, You Hang Up. What does Frankie sound like behind the set? Well, he cites Zac Hanson as his teacher. You know, the Zac Hanson whom we can blame for “MMMBop.” In a 2004 interview he said, “My best friends are Hanson. When they come out for their full electric tour after their CD gets released, they’re going to have two drum kits up there, and I’m gonna jam with them.”

As for You Hang Up, well, their first single, “All of my Life,” is pretty cookie-cutter pop rock, complete with whiny, angsty vocals in the vein of There for Tomorrow or Quietdrive, but at least there’s a nearly constant crashing of cymbals!

Anyone interested in Frankie’s post-Malcolm acting career can look at his Wikipedia page. Some standouts include a starring role opposite Harvey Keitel in “My Sexiest Year,” for which he filmed a love scene, and “Extreme Movie,” a straight-to-DVD compilation of skits about porn and crushes on Abraham Lincoln written by Will Forte and Andy Samberg and co-starring Jamie Kennedy and Michael Cera.

One of his last acting jobs was voice work on a film for which he was the executive producer, “Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman,” with William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman, an interactive animated movie based on the book series, complete with 11 different endings!

Guardian.co.uk

From St Winifred’s School Choir to Hanson, are children’s angelic voices really the most hated sound in pop?

What is it? Children! Singing! Er, obviously. Singing kids have surfaced in one-off singles by many bands since Pink Floyd’s 1979 youth-refusenik anthem Another Brick in the Wall Part II. The next year, St Winifred’s School Choir proved that choirs of little angels could get codgers to prise open their wallets with the Christmas number one smash There’s No One Quite Like Grandma. By 1983 we had the dubious Mini-Pops and the underage frontgirl of Bow Wow Wow appearing nude on her album, and the association of children and pop music was forever muddled with connotations of misplaced sexuality and general wrongness.

Who uses it? Lots of indie bands – from the Smiths to Smog – have propped up playful choruses with howling off-key rugrats, and hip hop’s not adverse to using this trick either. There have been some great non-dodgy kids’ groups: Hanson’s MMMbop is a classic, as is Smoosh’s She Like Electric album, and everyone liked Kriss Kross, right?

Children’s choirs are still big unit-shifters for Christian music, which has partially bled into a fascination by outsider music historians with children’s records. The best-known is the Langley Schools Music Project LP, which places the heavy, heartbroken – sometimes faux-naif – words of Brian Wilson and Karen Carpenter in the mouths of actual-naif 1970s Canadian schoolchildren. The Kids Of Widney High – a music project for severely (usually mentally) disabled teenagers in a Californian school – is even more devastating, but their albums are fantastic. Otis Fodder’s 365 Days Project also unearthed some gems, such as Dondero High School Band’s wall-of-sound take on glam rock, and home-recorded oddities such as The Cheese Band’s brilliant I Like Cheese! We’ve made Spotify playlists of children’s choirs and kids in pop.

How does it work? Massed kids’ singalongs usually just pop up behind the choruses of pop songs, although there are odd instances such as Jens Lekman sampling himself as a child, or Nico giving her kid a song on her album.

Where does it come from? The womb! Or, at least, a place and time before pop became corrupt.

Why is it classic? The crazed exuberance of a bunch of brats high on artificial additives is awesome rocket fuel for pop songs, but some people REALLY HATE the sound of children’s voices. Like, fingernails down the blackboard-hate.

What’s the best-ever children’s choir song? The results of a musicological poll into people’s favourite and least favourite sounds and song themes led artists Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier to use the data in creating what they hypothesised should be the The Most Unwanted Music. What resulted was a 20-minute bagpipe-powered epic eulogising different public holidays, voiced by a rapping opera diver, and – the most unwanted sound of all – singing children. Thing is … it’s awesome!

Five facts and things

• Interestingly, when Soldier and Melamid turned their attention to what statistically should be The Most Wanted Music – with no children singing – people found the results bland and uninspired.

• Former Senseless Things bassist Morgan Nicholls (now with Gorillaz and Lily Allen) launched his solo career as M Organ with Miss Parker – an amazing song built around his little brother rapping into a dictaphone in the back of a geography class.

• What everyone thinks is a children’s choir on The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want is actually grown-up people’s The London Bach Choir.

• Although it’s easy to balk at alleged sex offenders such as Michael Jackson and R Kelly using kids’ choirs on their mawkish hits, Faith No More and Denim getting kids to sing on songs about giving blowjobs (Be Aggressive and Grandad’s False Teeth, respectively) is arguably even more wrong. Great tunes, though.

• Want to talk actual child abuse in pop? For The Kids, from Lou Reed’s darked-out Berlin, producer Bob Ezrin (also responsible for the kiddies on Another Brick in the Wall, God of Thunder by Kiss and Alice Cooper’s School’s Out) allegedly lied to his own children that their mother had died and recorded their tormented wailing as texture for the song.