August 11, 2007: The Right in All Our Fighting?

Hanson fans are so grumpy. Whether we're fighting about Natalie on HansonSecret or debating venue sleepover policies on Hanson.net, we're always breaking a major collective sweat about something. I guess it's not surprising, given that everyone basically hates us, but must we always take our alienation out on each other?

Mostly, though, we take it out on Hanson. Who hasn't cramped their scroll finger reading about the horrors of Are You Listening, or Taylor's current facial hair arrangement, or the band's stupid contests and clunky songs? As much as the endless message board threads and LiveJournal comments raise my ire (grumpiness about grumpiness — my favorite kind), I also understand perfectly well that I'm part of the problem.

I complain about Hanson all the time.

I think Are You Listening is hypocritical and moronic, I'm cynical about the band's charity work, and I think the documentary Strong Enough to Break was hilarious, amateurish, and deeply self-serving. It's not just that I feel entitled to these opinions. I see them as basic truth. In other words, in all matters concerning Hanson, I'm always right.

I don't believe in that rightness because I know more about Hanson — more than is totally healthy in some instances — than other people. I believe that I'm right because I deeply, deeply love Hanson. And loving Hanson entitles me to believe — and say — anything I damn well please about them. Even if it's sort of mean. (Isaac has a squinty eye.) Or hyperbole. (Zac has a terrible singing voice.) Or just misguided. (Taylor got married for the wrong reasons.) It's not fair. It's not logical. But very little about being a Hanson fan is. Which brings me to another thing: This web site.

At this point in the mellow golden years of my fandom, I don't write very often about how much I love Hanson. I assume, dear Fanson, that the existence of this little cybershrine is proof enough of that. And also, who wants to read about how cute Taylor is? You know he's cute. You have four copies of Totally Taylor in your attic. You want to talk about the music? The music changed my life and altered my outlook the world, my generation, and my place in both. But how many times can you say that without boring everyone into a coma or sounding like one of those circa-1997 Anglefire web sites whose sole editorial mission was reporting the color of Taylor's latest toothbrush?

I don't think the moody fans on the message boards are much different. Their love is proclaimed. It is tattooed on their backs and stolen from their bank accounts and carved across their consciousnesses.

In light that, why are we not allowed to call Zac out on that dirty t-shirt?

Posted by Laura Motta | 8:25 AM | 4 comments | link |

August 5, 2007: Too Good for the Running Man?

If there is one song on The Walk that poses any sort of genuine conundrum — and musical conundrums are rare indeed in Hansonland, the chorus of Lonely Again aside — it's Running Man. Here's why: It's really good, and it shouldn't be.

There is something deeply wrong with Running Man, with its obsessively catchy hook and Zac's strangled-cat vocal. It is cheeseball to the point of idiocy, like something Greg would have sung solo into a skinny mic on one of those mysterious episode-ending "variety show performances" on The Brady Bunch. And yet Running Man is possibly the best song on an already strong album, with the qualifier thrown in only because of Something Going 'Round.

So what's the problem here? Isn't Zac Hanson allowed to just write a great song, end of story?

Actually, no. He's not, as he's shown us over and over again with such draggy nonmasterpieces as The Walk and the brain cell-obliterating Fire On the Mountain. Running Man is such an anomaly that I initially convinced myself that Taylor wrote it and then kicked the lead vocal over to baby Zac for some deranged brotherly, religious, or debt-settling reason.

That's clearly not the case, as the liner notes have shown. (There is much to say here about listening to an album roughly 800 times before the liner notes have even made it to the printer, but alas, that is a whole other essay.) Zac wrote Running Man, to be sure, but I was also right to assume that he had help.

Running Man is a co-write with Bleu, the criminally underappreciated, copiously sideburned songster whose springy, melody-loaded albums could teach Zac a thing or seven about keeping things bright and hooky, and it sounds like they did. It's also interesting that a decade plus of collaboration and cohabitation with Jordan Taylor Hanson could not make Zac into an interesting songwriter but a couple of sessions with Bleu could. It's a testament to how good Hanson can be when their music is infused with new, nonrelated blood, but it's also sort of fascinating that Zac had to go outside of his family to be as good as someone in his family.

Posted by Laura Motta | 9:28 AM | 3 comments | link |