Today is Taylor Hanson's 24th birthday. There was a time in my life not so very long ago when I would have known this weeks in advance and I wouldn't have been rushed with a feeling of nostalgia and "Oh yeah!" when I chanced upon it in the newspaper. There was a time in my life not so very long ago when I was about 89% sure that I was going to marry him. Yes, I was one of those, and it all started about ten years ago, which is really hard to believe. Those were good days. Stacy, Sarah, and I spending hours papering our bedroom walls and school binders with posters, finding the perfect pictures and combinations, always eager to outdo each other and find the best pin ups in whatever teen magazine we should have been embarrassed to buy and hang them above our beds like a prize, talking about which one of us "got" which Hanson brother, playing in Sarah's driveway for hours with "Middle of Nowhere blaring for the whole neighborhood to hear, recording every Hanson appearance and watching our "Hanson tapes" for hours, making Dad drive us over to Seattle to see them...twice (he's a good dad), and lots of lots of other things that I could mention, but won't at the risk of sounding completely out of my mind. But I was 14!
I wonder sometimes what I would think if Hanson came on the scene right now with MMMBop and all of that bubblegum stuff. While it's likely (I hope) that I would not become the obsessed Hanson fan I was, I have a feeling there'd still be something in me that would really dig them. While I sometimes pretend that my music tastes are pretty cool with all my Sufjan and Deathcab and Rogue Wave, etc., I am a sucker for good hooks. (Relient K is one of my favorite bands, so this should be obvious). And while so much of Hanson's early stuff is over-produced tripe, there was something about the songs they wrote themselves that was more than just catchy. There was a real talent and love for the music that to me, even at fourteen, showed a lot of integrity. And I think that, even at fourteen, I found that integrity incredibly sexy.
Or maybe I just found Taylor Hanson incredibly sexy. I'm not gonna lie. I still do, now that he's married and has what, like 10 kids?
But anyway, that isn't the point. The point is that Hanson was, and is, a real band. Had they started out when they were older, and looked a little more like they had a Y chromosome, people would have taken them more seriously. I dunno. Maybe I'm blinded by my former obsession. But I'd like to think that I had a little sense when it came to music, as I never really jumped on the boy band bandwagon in the Hanson aftermath (There are some fun songs, and I admit that I did like the Spice Girls, but I never argued that they were talented or had any sort of integrity). And let's face it, my current taste in music is pretty amazing. And I'm an effing music MAJOR whose going to get her effing MASTERS in music starting this fall, so I probably know more about good music than you do anyway.
Of course, I'm kidding. Music is so diverse, and there is a ton that I can recognize as really amazing with a lot of talent behind it that I just don't dig. But I can see the passion there. And I'd like to think that Hanson is one of those bands with the passion and the talent too, and for that I think they should get some credit, especially for the stuff they've been putting out in the last couple of years, which is pretty damn different than Mmmbop.
Here's a link to a trailer of the documentary about how poorly their former label, Island/ Def Jam, treated them. CLICK HERE!!!. I haven't seen the movie, but I think it has more to do with the evils of the music industry and how to overcome it than it does about Hanson itself, but it looks kind of interesting. Plus, there's this really hot shot of Taylor smoking a pipe. No, I'm no longer fourteen, but I'm still a female, and that's hot.
I didn't really set out to write an all Hanson related entry. But the world (or the two people reading this) needs to know, damn it, that Hanson is still one of the coolest bands in the world of music, and now they're just dripping with indie cred, which just might make them a little more appealing to music snobs, especially when all of their indie heroes are getting signed to major labels.
It's all about the 3CG, and if you know what I'm talking about, we are officially friends. haha.
songs: "Strong Enough to Break" by Hanson, of course!
yesterday // life goes on
