Glam Adelaide

Hanson return to Australia with their Red Green Blue 2022 Tour

Interview by Olivia Williams

Often when Hanson are interviewed by Australian media, we hear a lot about how “grown up” they are now, how many children they have collectively sired. Good natured questions about whether they ever get sick of singing ‘Mmmbop’, followed by rhetoric about how the band is “back”.

What is often overlooked in these quick timeslots, corresponding with a new album release or an upcoming Australian tour is the fact that this band, comprised of brothers Isaac (41), Taylor (39) and Zac (36), has a long-standing history of music making, creation, innovation, and commitment to fan connection. Their CV speaks for itself, preceded by 11 studio albums, a long string of EPs created exclusively for their online fan club at hanson.net, a back catalogue of literally hundreds of songs, as well as thirty years of playing together as a band… not to mention fans who have stood the test of time and continued showing up to Hanson shows for actual decades.

Hanson aren’t back. They never went anywhere.

They have been nose-to-the-grindstone working hard, creating, producing and maintaining a long standing connection with their fans long since the days of ‘Mmmbop’ and thousands of screaming teenagers in a carpark hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourite brother.

2022 will see Hanson heading to Australia and New Zealand in November as part of a long awaited and extensive RED GREEN BLUE 2022 World Tour. This, on the back of this month’s release of their 11^th studio album, RGB (Red, Green, Blue), a unique combination of three solo-led projects, bringing their creative voices together like never before.

We sat down with Zac, the band’s drummer and creative voice behind the BLUE portion of the album, to find out more about how this project came together and what we can expect from their upcoming tour.

This week has seen the release of your new album RGB – an album split into three individual projects, as brothers, 5 songs each. If you have any experience in digital or graphic design you’ll understand RGB as a colour format in that each of these individual colours, red green blue, can be combined in different proportions to produce any other colours. Such a clever metaphor for you Taylor and Isaac as individuals, producing something on your own, but then bringing that together to create a full Hanson album. When you heard the finished product did you all feel like this was a Hanson record or that it was perhaps something entirely different?

Well, I think it clearly has some different style to it, which I think is great, I love that. It still feels to me very much from the source, but also like it’s innovating and iterating which I think is what good art does. It’s not standing still. It’s continuing to push itself in different directions.

I don’t know if we’ll ever do something like this again, I don’t know exactly what the future is but what I do know is I see growth through it. I think there’s great storytelling for the fans of Hanson, that they get to kind of go behind the curtain a little bit, they get to see a little bit of what makes each brother, maybe more clearly than ever, who they are. And then through that you get to reflect on all the thirty years of music and that better understanding of “where did that song come from?”, “what’s that story about?”.

Take us to that moment when you’re first in the studio recording your individual BLUE tracks, is there some trepidation about the road ahead creating music primarily without your brothers and band members of 30 years, or was it an exhilarating feeling to have that freedom? 

Well, like you said, there’s some history. We’ve never done solo projects, but working for other people, writing for other people, you have that experience, so it wasn’t scary like “I’ve never done this before”, but what was most interesting to me was kind of letting yourself enjoy the process.

Not getting into that headspace of comparing and worrying about what the other brothers were going to do, but simply saying what makes me really happy and fulfilled right in this moment.

The truth is, there’s about a hundred things you could do and only five songs to do them in, so that was kind of hard…to say, what sides are we going to show today? What styles are we going to put forward?

Because there’s so many things you can do, you can never represent everything and so, it was honestly incredibly fun. Because it was just a new kind of creative process, and that… for those who know me well, one of my favourite things to do is be challenged, with a new set of scenarios, like here’s an accordion and a tape recorder, go make an album and I’ll be like “uhh ok!” I love that. So, this was right up my alley.

You probably all have a full album of songs within you individually, so cutting it down to 5 songs each, must have been like choosing a favourite child? 

It’s not that there couldn’t have been many, many, many more songs. This group of songs that I picked was a combination of writing songs specifically for this project and then one or two that had been sitting around for a while that I thought, this needs a special home.

Like the song ‘Where I Belong’ I started writing about maybe five years ago, but never finished it. Sort of consciously never finished it. It felt like it was an important song, and it was just waiting for the right home.

When this project came forward, it seemed like it fit with the story we were going to tell, even like the stories within a story. Having a song about finding place in an album that somewhat disrupts the norm that kind of says, we’re going to do this in a totally different way. It seemed to connect. I think also, it’s been a time in the world—I think a lot of musicians feel—that we were told, for years now, that we’re not essential.

Like what we do is not of equal value, it has to be put on the side because it’s too dangerous for people to be together. There are all kinds of medical conversations, that’s not what I’m having when I say that, but I think we all realise that being together, singing together, sharing these communal moments… this is one of the most important things anyone ever does. So I think that song was resonating for me.

What were each of your thoughts on the other brother’s material once you heard it? 

I could definitely pick some songs that stand out to me. ‘Child at Heart’ was one that when we were all talking about how we were going to represent this album—because it’s our label and our band—I know I was very much for it, I thought ‘Child at Heart’ was a special song, so having Taylor go first with that, I think was a great message and just really cool sonically.

We’ve been influenced by a lot of different things but that side, that Brit Rock ‘Travis’ and ‘Coldplay’ and those kinds of bands, ‘Radiohead’ a little bit, you don’t hear that sound in our band very much. And that song tips its hat to it in a very cool way. So, I loved hearing that.

As far as Isaac’s GREEN songs, there were some really fun moments like ‘Cold as Ice’, that song was a ballad he had written years ago and then sort of completely reimagined through the production team with him and David [Garza] and Jim [Scott], they took a ballad and turned it into this sort of jam, rock, funky song and it was recorded all live off the floor in one big take, we didn’t even know what they were doing, it was the last thing that was recorded for the whole album – that was special, there was a certain heart in there.

I think that was kind of a cool and something he wanted to do, because he was the last to record there was a sense of finality to having the last song be something we all did live together. And even though it was about Isaac’s vision and about GREEN, his vision was to bring us back together which was kind of fun.

You are no strangers to taking the road less travelled, you started your own independent label after a few long of years in the early 2000s fighting an uphill battle with a record company that was no longer fully on the same page as you, and it paid off with your first album as an independent label peaking at #1 on the US Billboard charts for independent albums. This must have been a big turning point for you collectively being able to have creative control over your music

Yeah, I mean, we are no strangers to risk. We seem to like risk; I don’t know if that fits with just being an artist. The way we’ve always looked at this process is, it’s very individual, you are kind of forging a new path with your career, with your ideas with your song writing, always pushing yourself to try and dig deeper and find new stories to tell.

So, all of the steps along the way, whether it’s the label or the things we’ve done with managing ourselves or forming a beer company or the music festival we’ve started, I guess it’s just in our DNA.

I think you find yourself when you challenge yourself, it’s probably less about risk and more about searching for something bigger and something better, never wanting to rest where you are and say, “oh I’m done, I’ve done it”. It’s saying, is there something more I need to stretch for, I need to push for, I’ve learned this skill now how can I become better at it.

You guys have been pioneering online community with your online fan club hanson.net since the very early days of the internet. But when COVID hit, you were about to head on a world tour and that was turned on its head.

You hit the ground running and were so quick to respond by still connecting to fans via your website, you were really at the precipice of streaming live shows, with technology probably only just catching up with you in some ways, and really at a time when connection was so important to people. Did you feel like you were reinventing the wheel here or, or given that connecting with your fans online has always been such a big part of what you do, was this just another day at the office for you guys? 

It’s a unique feeling to be told you can’t go places and to feel isolated…not by time, because there’s never enough time in the day to get everywhere you want to go, but to be told “hey you’re not allowed”. That changes the game. It feels different, I think.

One of the things we wanted to do when we saw “no concerts” and we’re seeing all kinds of people in our entertainment industry, I think of the technicians and the guys behind the scenes who make their living and pay for their mortgage by helping concerts get put on, lighting guys, sound guys, guitar techs, we see all these guys where really they’re out of work suddenly!

Also down the street from us, there’s a famous venue called Cain’s Ballroom that has been there for over 100 years now, they can’t put on concerts so we immediately were thinking about how to find a way to not only connect with our fans but also to help in whatever way we can our little community of guys have work. Keep this venue open.

We were seeing that a lot of venues around the country were sort of going under, never to return. That’s such a sad thing as a musician, because we’ve played the teeniest 200 seat club, we’ve played arenas and everything in between, right? We did end up doing about 25 concerts at Cain’s Ballroom over about a year and a half period, which is a lot to play one venue.

It wasn’t all bad, because one thing that’s been really cool for us is to see everyone be forced to adopt ZOOM proficiency, and though it’s not the way I want to continue in the world as ZOOM being the option, what we did see was engagement at the same moment in time from fans all around the world, watching the same concert, chatting in the same chat room – it was almost like a return to 1998 where suddenly we see people engaging in like America Online (AOL) was suddenly a thing.

I think that was really cool and there’s a part of that we’re trying to keep as we go forward. While we’ve all learned streaming at a new level, we’ve been trying to stream for years, and do more of that. But it’s always been an uphill battle, and suddenly you see, wow this is really available in a new way. It wasn’t all smooth, we definitely had some streams where the internet decided to just stop working and technology… things would fail and we’d try to figure out what it was and connect with a new group, but overall what it was, was very good.

Hopefully we get to keep all that goodness and add in people live in the room together.

Talk to me about the upcoming Australian tour, it’s been awhile, obviously fans can expect to hear from your latest release RGB, but you honestly have such a back catalogue of songs from the past 30 years, you’ve got your nostalgic tracks from the early days, you have 11 studio albums, years and years’ worth of members only EPs accessible via your fan club, are you changing up your set list every night to try and showcase as many of these songs for fans as possible? Or do you just stick to what you can remember the lyrics to?

Well, you obviously have a deeper understanding than some about how much there is there. Fan club songs…there are probably about 100 songs that have just been released to hanson.net members over the years, 11 albums, yeah there’s a lot.

Even in this last year ‘Against the World’ the album we released one single at a time came out, and of course RGB which was 15 songs. It’s really hard to play them all, and this almost to me feels like a reset. You’re starting from square one in some strange way, where everything is returning and beginning again, so I think there’ll be a lot of different stuff.

Definitely playing some old stuff, definitely playing some new stuff. We’d have to sit in one city for two weeks playing every single night to really get all the music. What we try to do each night, is find that very difficult balance between playing for the fans who have been coming for thirty years and also knowing there are people that might just see one concert, this might be the first and only concert they ever see. So, you want to hit the songs that have been highlights, the ‘Mmmbop’s and the ‘Penny and Me’s and ‘Where’s the Love’ and ‘Thinkin’ bout Something’. You’ve got to hit that mix of things as well.

HANSON
​RED GREEN BLUE 2022 TOUR
​NOVEMBER 2022

Sunday 6 November
​The Astor Theatre | Perth, WA
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Wednesday 9 November
​Enmore Theatre | Sydney, NSW
​Licensed All Ages*
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Saturday 12 November
​Hindley Street Music Hall | Adelaide, SA
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​moshtix.com.au | Ph: 1300 438 849

Monday 14 November
​The Fortitude Music Hall | Brisbane, QLD
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketmaster.com.au | Ph: 136 100

Wednesday 16 November
​The Forum | Melbourne, VIC
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Saturday 19 November
​Powerstation | Auckland, NZ
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)

More information at frontiertouring.com/hanson

ET 

It may be hard to imagine, but the Hanson brothers have been making music togetherfor 30 years! The trio — Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson — stopped by ET on Monday for an exclusive performance of their new song, “Write You a Song,” off their latest album, Red Green Blue, and to reflect on their impressive career thus far.

2022 marks not only 30 years of the brothers playing together as a band, but also the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough 1997 hit, “MMMBop.”

“I mean, it’s a lifetime,” Taylor shared. “We started with nothing but the voice, and that’s how we walked onstage 30 years ago. … I think in the end, taking it back to that, taking it back to the song, talk about brothers and family singing together, you really can’t replicate that.”

Their newest single, however, is for the next generation of Hansons. Between the three brothers, they have 13 kids — Isaac and wife Nicole share three kids, Taylor and wife Natalie are parents of seven and Zac and wife Kathryn have five little ones — and it was Isaac’s daughter, Nina, who inspired “Write You a Song,” when she asked her dad for a song of her very own.

“The idea of the song is, songs are kind of like memories, they go with you wherever you go,” Isaac shared. “And so, if you write a song for somebody, they’ll never be lonely, ’cause they’ll always have you with them.”

“She loved it,” he added of Nina’s reaction as his brothers poked fun at him for being a pushover for his little girl, who also wanted to take center stage in the music video for the song.

“Now she knows how much power she has over you,” Zac teased.

“I know, it’s a real problem,” Isaac admitted.

As for the possibility of a next-generation family band, never say never!

“There’s definitely some creative kids,” Taylor shared. “I mean, we have some drummers, we have some guitar players between the cousins. The cousins are very close, that is a very cool thing.”

“I was hoping for a Major League Baseball player,” Isaac joked.

“We would like a couple of attorneys, maybe a couple of doctors,” Taylor agreed. “Maybe to kind of even it out.”

So, what do the kids have to say about their dads’ iconic long hair and ’90s style from back in the day?

“It’s crazy to see my 11-year-old daughter wearing, like, Dr. Martens and bucket hats, and I am like, ‘Honey, I wore bucket hats and Dr. Martens,” Zach noted with a laugh.

“My oldest, recently, he saw a photo of me at his age basically standing next to Steven Tyler and Jon Bon Jovi at the MTV Europe Awards,” Isaac shared. “[He was like] what the heck is going on? Because he loves Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, so he was, like, tripping out.”

“In the end, you’re just ‘Dad’ to your kids,” Taylor added. “You’re there for them, you try to share what you can because you hope that they see you are working hard for something that you care about and that maybe they can replicate that in some way on their own.”

Through 30 years of performing, Hanson, as a group, has never taken an official hiatus. They explained to ET that creative growth and other passion projects — their 3CG Records label, collaborations, festivals, their own craft beer, cleverly named “Mmmhops,” and more — have been able to help them “stretch different muscles” and continue to advance their craft.

And it’s that growth that led them to Red Green Blue, a unique take on an album. The record is actually comprised of three solo-led projects from the brothers: Taylor (Red), Isaac (Green) and Zac (Blue).

“We’ve always been focused on that united voice,” Taylor shared. “This is an idea Issac had for a long time. He said, ‘What if we were to break it up in this way and so each guy took five songs, said I’m gonna write and produce and build one another in?'”

“Ultimately, it’s still a Hanson record,” he assured. “It’s just another way to focus on the fact that this is a band of three writers, three players and three singers.”

“I think for a lot of people this is a way to kind of discover things that you don’t know about what we do,” Isaac agreed, “and get a fresh look at who we are as a band, who we are as artists and who we are as individuals.”

“You have to grow and change, right? As you go through 25 years of life,” Zac noted. “We started when I was six. I’m 36 right now. Things are very different.”

Ultimately, the brothers said, they found the Red Green Blue project to be a refreshing way to celebrate their industry milestones, as well as to “reevaluate and examine the creative process,” Isaac shared. “It’s about growth.”

“Considering all of the things that could have happened to our career, we have been so lucky that the challenges we have been up against haven’t killed us,” Taylor marveled. “We have come through, you know, we have started a record company, been entrepreneurs, now we chase our dreams and still make music, and now to be touring all over the world, more places than ever, it’s kind of amazing.”

Hanson’s new album, Red Green Blue, is out now and their Red Green Blue tour kicks off June 8 in Helsinki, Finland. Check out their ET exclusive performance of “Write You a Song” below!

Watch Hanson Perform ‘Write You a Song’ Live (Exclusive)

Billboard

MTV once reported that there are 93,000 renditions of Hanson’s “MMMBop” floating around on YouTube. But according to the sibling trio, their signature hit is pretty much uncoverable. “People can’t sing the chorus right,” eldest Isaac told Vulture around the 20^th anniversary of the song’s inception, adding, “Most of the time they syncopate it wrong.” Of course, many who’ve tried would no doubt claim they were simply putting their own spin on the syllable-cramming doo-wop hit.

From nu-metallers and swing-jazz collectives to animated blue humanoids, here’s a look at ten of the biggest, best and bonkers acts to have covered the earworm in the quarter century since it reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 24, 1997.

Postmodern Jukebox

“Someone needs to either make it totally their own in a genuinely unique way, or it needs to be a band that has a sensibility for old R&B,” Taylor Hanson argued in the aforementioned 2016 interview. Just a few months on, a group with the credentials to fit the latter answered the middle child’s calling. Just as they’d previously done with Radiohead’s “Creep,” Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” and Pitbull’s “Timber,” Postmodern Jukebox gave “MMMBop” the 1950s treatment, on this occasion leaning further into the original’s doo-wop vibes. Sadly, pop’s premier Pagliacci clown, Puddles Pity Party, didn’t come aboard but the smart-suited vocal quartet make up for his absence.

The Vamps

The Vamps were in diapers when “MMMBop” hit No. 1, but they were still able to recognize its importance to their career, telling Just Jared Jr., “MMMBop is one of the biggest songs from a teen act in the past 20 years. The song had such a worldwide impact, and we love the song so we HAD to cover it!” The British four piece’s rendition doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but released shortly after their debut single, it helped further establish their place alongside the likes of 5 Seconds of Summer, Rixton and Lawson in the new wave of boy bands with guitars, a subgenre Hanson pioneered.

Leo Moracchioli

Norwegian YouTube star Leo Moracchioli has given more than 400 pop hits a heavy metal makeover. So it was inevitable that he’d eventually get round to tackling one of the biggest of the ‘90s. Hanson aren’t entirely unfamiliar with the world of shredding, thrash and moshpits. In 2011, a Hanson cover of Slipknot’s “Wait and Bleed” emerged amid the news they’d be recording an entire tribute album to Iowa’s finest – sadly, this proved to be an April Fools’ joke. But multi-instrumentalist Moracchioli’s aggressive take, complete with a brand-new super-chugging, screamo middle-eight, makes the masked metallers sound like Kidz Bop.

Kidz Bop

Speaking of which, “MMMBop” had the honor, or some would say dishonor, of appearing on the very first Kidz Bop compilation, the imaginatively titled Kidz Bop Kidz, at the turn of the century. And then alongside the likes of Ace of Base’s “The Sign,” MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” and Kriss Kross’ “Jump,” it was introduced to a whole new generation of all-singing, all-dancing tweens on 2017’s Kidz Bop ‘90s Pop. This time around, the chart-topping single was accompanied by a happy, shiny music video complete with choreography, bright pastel colors and a giant inflatable sofa.

Purr Machine

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum comes this gonzo cover from electro-industrial outfit Purr Machine. Alongside Society Burning’s cover of The Cardigans’ “Lovefool,” Hate Dept.’s take on Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” and Hexedene’s version of Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever,” it was recorded for the curiously titled Nod’s Tacklebox o’ Fun, a 1999 compilation released by cult label Re-Constriction Records. The Los Angeles trio, named after member Betsy Martin’s love of cats, render the original unrecognizable by lurching from menacing breakbeat to slowed-down darkwave. It’s “MMMBop” like you’ve never heard before.

The Sons of Pitches

Perhaps surprisingly, “MMMBop” was never tackled by the cast of Glee. But it was interpolated by the Barden Bellas in a Pitch Perfect 2 medley, while a year earlier it helped the wittily titled a cappella group The Sons of Pitches claim victory in BBC talent show The Naked Choir. The all-male six-piece takes the Hanson classic in all kinds of weird and wonderful directions in the space of just two minutes, from country hoedown and Beastie Boys-esque hip-hop to ‘70s funk and slightly questionable reggae. It’s a supremely clever mash-up of styles which would no doubt put anything New Directions could offer to shame.

The Smurfs

Noel Gallagher might not have allowed The Smurfs to squeak their way through an Oasis classic (“We hated the Smurfs as kids, I’m not letting a bunch of blue guys in white hats touch our stuff”) for their first album in nearly two decades. But another sibling-fronted outfit who found fame in the mid-1990s were apparently more than happy to let the likes of Papa Smurf and Smurfette loose on their biggest hit. Appearing on the Down Under editions of The Smurfs Go Pop!, the Belgian cartoon characters’ tribute to “MMMBop” is every bit as annoyingly infectious as you’d expect. But confusingly, it’s named after Madonna’s Motown pastiche “True Blue.”

The Horne Section

If you’ve ever wondered what a William Shatner-style cover of “MMMBop” would sound like, wonder no more. Best-known as the sidekick on the UK version of Taskmaster, musical comedian Alex Horne attempts to make lyrics such as “Plant a seed, plant a flower, plant a rose/You can plant any one of those/Keep planting to find out which one grows” sound like the height of profundity with his deadpan delivery. But the sudden burst of brilliantly silly chiptune and occasional boy band-esque ad-libs from The Horne Section’s Will Collier prove that unlike the Star Trek icon’s musings, it’s all done with tongue placed firmly in cheek.

Punk Rock Factory

Punk Rock Factory have made a name for themselves largely by making various kids TV theme tunes and Disney sing-alongs resemble the sound of an early ‘00s Warped Tour. But on 2019’s The Wurst Is Yet to Come, the four-piece took to their Sausage Factory studio to put their spin on a half-century-spanning array of pop/rock hits. Alongside The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” Men at Work’s “Down Under” and The Corrs’ “Breathless,” the meat obsessives also gave “MMMBop” the fast and furious treatment you’d expect from their no-nonsense moniker.

Scary Pockets

Forget vampish boy bands, post-modern viral sensations and cheekily named talent show winners; the title of YouTube’s most-watched “MMMBop” rendition belongs to a funk collective featuring the co-founder of Patreon. The brainchild of Pomplamoose’s Jack Conte, Scary Pockets have racked up more than five million views with their effortlessly cool take on the 1997 classic. It’s not hard to see why. Singer Lucy Schwartz delivers a joyful vocal while fittingly sporting a Hanson T-shirt. And the rest of the group, tightly squeezed together in what appears to be the corner of someone’s living room, looks to be having just as much fun giving “MMMBop” a jam band makeover.

The Latch

In 1997, Hanson began their meteoric rise to success when they released “MMMBop”, a song that spent nine weeks holding the number one spot on the ARIA Singles Chart and went on to be certified platinum twice over. The brothers, Isaac, Taylor and Zac, were only 16, 13, and 11 years old respectively at the time.

Since then, Hanson have released 11 studio albums, six compilation albums, four live albums and two demo albums, with their sound evolving and changing as they’ve grown out of adolescence, made their way through young adulthood, gotten married, and had children. Their sound has grown, evolved and shifted along with them, but for the general public, they’ll forever be most strongly connected with the infectious pop melody of “MMMBop”.

As the Hanson brothers sat down to talk to The Latch about their latest release, RED GREEN BLUE, and their upcoming Australian tour, we had to know: do they ever consider what their career trajectory would’ve looked like had they debuted later on?

“It’s an interesting thing to think about,” said Zac. “I mean, ultimately, we’re really really thankful for the strong, real, authentic connection we made with the fans at such a young age.”

Calling the experience “something that we could never top”, Zac went on to say that it was a “huge, huge, huge benefit” for them to have debuted when they did, “because when people were still defining who they wanted to be in their life, they were saying ‘I want Hanson to be a part of that’”.

“People would probably think of us as a rock band instead of a pop band if we had come out five years later,” Zac conceded, “but we love pop music, so as long as people think of us, I think it’s good most ways!”

The new album, RED GREEN BLUE, is comprised of three solo-led projects — Taylor’s Red, Isaac’s Green, and Zac’s Blue.

With 30 years of being a band together in the rearview mirror, Zac said that in recent years, they’ve turned their attention to their “bucket list” projects, like 2018’s String Theory, which saw the band reimagine their classic songs for a symphony show.

The RED GREEN BLUE album, they said, was a way for them to shake up the way they approach songwriting, and the way people perceive them as a band, and to work on individual projects while staying “very much together”, said Zac.

Isaac agreed, adding: “over the years there have been a lot of songs Zac sings lead on, I sing lead on, Taylor sings lead on, and to make more of a point of that I think is a way for people to get a fresh look at the band“.

The most important takeaway, Taylor said, is that they’ve “always been about the music”.

“The music is the reason,” Taylor explained. “It’s the reason we broke young — we were hungry for it — but we just really, in a very pure way, loved the process of creating things, and of getting to play shows.”

Noting that this album is a way to continue “to push the story” of the band, Taylor continued: “All of us enjoy producing, enjoy the studio work as much as we enjoy walking on stage and being the artist, being out in front”.

“It’s gotta be interesting, it’s gotta be inspired, it’s gotta be something that you wanna share, and this project definitely stretched muscles for everybody that hadn’t been stretched —”

Isaac interjected. “I’m still feeling the discomfort,” he joked, rubbing his arm. They laughed.

Working on their solo-driven projects was a way for each brother to tease out their individual sound, which Zac described as “a cool science experiment”.

“We have spent so much time together and at a time even shared a sound system together, had the same record collection,” he explained, “so to see how we diverge when we have 30 years of the same influences, it’s really interesting.”

“I think some of it is driven by the instruments that we primarily play,” Isaac hypothesised, adding that for him, it brought out “the singer-songwriter” more.

“It brought out kind of a roots-ier version of myself, because when you’re sitting there going ‘what do I want to say?’, this is kind of the first time that I’m really allowing myself to be able to go ‘wait a minute, I’m totally in charge of this!’” Isaac explained.

“Nobody’s gonna tell me no!” Zac exclaimed, as they all laughed.

“No project, even this one, having exposed the clarity of different voices, can ever fully say ‘well, here’s the sound’, of this person,” Taylor said, “but I think a lot of the differences you hear are in the types of messages that people want to put into the lyrics, the stories, and I think our process is different.”

He continued: “It’s in the way we go about things, which you don’t hear as clearly, but it is reflected in the way we made these particular things.”

For Taylor, his “biggest interest” when songwriting is to create something that is “a point of connection”.

“It doesn’t have to make exact sense, but it should make sense emotionally,” he explained. “Sometimes you say stuff in a lyric that doesn’t actually, literally makes sense, but every single person is like ‘I know exactly what that is’. I’m looking for that, where even if you didn’t speak the language you would still get it, it’s that visceral sense of it.”

His brothers, however, have a different process.

“Zac is extremely creative,” Taylor said. “Zac is a visual artist, he likes to transport himself like ‘let’s make a movie, how would this character play out?’”

Meanwhile, Isaac is “true” and likes to convey his feelings and emotions directly, keeping thing raw and honest.

With a new album out and a slew of music they haven’t had a chance to play live yet, Hanson are itching to get back on the road after not being able to tour throughout COVID.

“My 40th birthday on the road was robbed from me!” Isaac exclaimed, laughing.

“We’re figuring out the tour right now,” Zac shared. “It’s an interesting place to be in, we’ve got so much new music.”

The struggle — although they would hesitate to call it that — is in trying to strike a balance in the show that represents the new material while not ignoring the classics.

“We don’t want to walk away from all these memories and all this history that people have with you,” Zac said.

With “like 40 singles” to choose from, choosing which classics to play is no easy feat, but Hanson are committed to giving the fans what they want.

“We never shy away from the classics, the stuff that really brought people together,” Zac said. “They’re probably coming with a friend that they listened to that song in the car on the way there, 20 years earlier they met at a place where they would listen to that song, so you wanna still be able to connect into those memories.”

He continued: “It’s about, ‘how do we make something from this that connects to people’s history?’ and excites them with something new and unexpected, which is the new music and the things we’ve never done.”

For Taylor, the show will be all about “gratitude” and “celebration”, and taking the opportunity to “really seize the moment with the audience”.

“We have this sense of ‘thank you, wow’, so you wanna play the songs that make people feel that excitement,” he explained, “and celebration is really just making sure that you get the chance to really enjoy and lift up the fact that, we all do get to finally get to do a real tour.”

With the Hanson brothers all having large families of their own now — Isaac has three kids, Taylor has seven and Zac has five — we had to know: Is Hanson: The Next Generation on its way?

They laughed. “If they call it Hanson: The Next Generation we’ll slap them across the face, like ‘YOU ARE NOT CREATIVE!’” Isaac joked.

The idea itself, however, is not out of the question.

“Our parents are musical, we have all kinds of relatives who have that ability,” said Zac, who added that “Taylor has some kids who are amazing musicians, [and] Isaac has a son who’s in several bands”.

“It’s possible!” Zac said, recalling the brothers’ own “very strong drive” when they were just starting out.

“It wasn’t put upon us,” Zac explained. “We were going ‘hey, can we play?’ or ‘hey, can somebody get me a drum set?’, that’s just the way it was and it was so very natural, and so I think if they chose to do that, it could happen, it could happen!”

Hanson’s new album RED GREEN BLUE is available now, and presale for the RED GREEN BLUE 2022 Tour begins on Tuesday, May 24.

FRONTIER MEMBERS PRE-SALE
​Runs 24 hours from: Tuesday 24 May (12noon local time) or until pre-sale allocation exhausted

ALL SHOWS 18+*

Sunday 6 November
​The Astor Theatre | Perth, WA
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Wednesday 9 November
​Enmore Theatre | Sydney, NSW
​Licensed All Ages*
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Saturday 12 November
​Hindley Street Music Hall | Adelaide, SA
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​moshtix.com.au | Ph: 1300 438 849

Monday 14 November
​The Fortitude Music Hall | Brisbane, QLD
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketmaster.com.au | Ph: 136 100

Wednesday 16 November
​The Forum | Melbourne, VIC
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Saturday 19 November
​Powerstation | Auckland, NZ
​18+
​On sale: Thursday 26 May (12noon local time)
​ticketmaster.co.nz | 0800 111 999

The Morning Show 

The musical brothers have a new album and are set to return to Australia for a tour this November.

Since gaining worldwide fame with their hit single MMMBop back in 1997, pop group Hanson, consisting of brothers Taylor, Isaac and Zac Hanson, have continued to entertain fans all over the world.

While still just kids when their catchy singalong hit went to No1 in at least 12 countries, 25 years later the group is still as popular as ever having just released their 11th album, Red Green Blue, and announcing a mammoth world tour that includes Australian dates in November.

Speaking with The Morning Show from New York, the brothers revealed they still held a great affinity for the platinum-selling MMMBop despite having to perform the song for close to a quarter of a century.

“When you go on stage and play that song, anyone would want to play it. The reaction is amazing, the amount of life that people have connected to that song, it’s a pleasure,” drummer Zac said.

“We have a great time playing it. It’s not everything, we’ve made a lot of music over 30 years but we want to play songs like MMMBop because of the connection to the audience.

“It’s the way we feel about going to see our favourite bands and hearing their iconic songs.”

Isaac explained the concept behind their latest album, Red Green Blue, which features three solo-led projects from each member of the group.

“It could go a few different ways, I guess, but the fun part about deciding to try something new, you never know exactly what the result is going to be, and for us this project was about diving and conquering in a way,” he said.

“It was positive deconstruction, we each wrote five songs and produced five songs,” added Zac.

As the band gets ready for their Red Green Blue 2022 tour which hits our shores in November, Taylor explained how the three brothers, who have 15 children between them, handle the logistics of life on the road.

“You don’t sleep a lot, but once you start having children it starts to feel like you’re on a tour all the time. You know, you’re up in the morning, you’re up at night, you’re trying to make sense of the world around you,” he said.

“We do all have families and where we can we bring them along and share the life experience, but ultimately we’re dad to them and we’ve got to go and do our thing.

“Our wives are probably ready like ‘OK, go back on the road’,” Taylor said.

For ticket information for Hanson’s new tour visit hanson.net