In the spring of 1992, just as the grunge triumphed on the US sales charts, three brothers who could have passed for sons of Kurt Cobain debuted at the Mayfest Arts Festival under the name The Hanson Brothers. In that first concert held in their native Tulsa, the second largest city in the State of Oklahoma, Isaac, Taylor and Zac (ages 11, 9 and six at the time) covered capella, and accompanied only by the snap of his fingers, Rockin’ Robin de Bobby Day o Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Secretly they had already started to compose their own songs. But what none of those present predicted was what was to come: five years later, with the single MMMBop, would star in one of the most anomalous phenomena remembered in the history of pop.
The childhood of the trio, like that of their other four brothers (anonymous to the rest of the world), was quite atypical. Raised in an evangelical Christian family, his parents, Walker and Diana, decided to take charge of his education. In 1989, during the months they lived in South America, the little ones took piano lessons and relentlessly played a cassette tape that collected great rock and Motown classics. “We were homeschooled and spent a lot of time reading poetry and listening to rock and roll. Although our father was an accountant, he had studied ballet at university and wanted to be a poet. They supported us a lot. They tolerated a drum set in the living room of our Oklahoma home, even though people in the Church said, ‘Why are you going to start a band? It is very dangerous”, recalled Isaac in de The Guardian in 2018. Soon they began to perform at fairs, block parties and schools. The profits from those gigs were invested in the recording of two independent albums that they sold at their concerts: Boomerang, from 1995, and MMMBop, published the following year. The latter included a version slower and more melancholic version of that success that is still playing today on the greatest hits stations.
De GAP a Urban Outfiters
After performing in 1996 at Austin’s South by Southwest, the festival where talent scouts often go in search of new stars, they got a manager who showed their work to major labels. They were rejected by 13 of them, branded as sounding “harmless” and appearing “old-fashioned”. Despite their wild blonde hair, they had more parallels with The Jackson 5 and the formations of doo-wop from the fifties and the sixties than with the bands grunge that the industry was looking for then.
His luck changed when Steve Greenberg, a Mercury Records executive, overheard the original version of MMMBop and signed the boys. In the summer of 1996 the entire family traveled to Los Angeles to work on Middle of Nowhere, his first studio album. While mixing and mastering Middle of Nowhere, Mercury Records set in motion the machinery of marketing. They spared no expense. The short-term goal was clear: Hanson had to conquer the same teenagers who wallpapered their rooms with posters of Spice Girls or Backstreet Boys. The first thing they did was mold the image of the brothers. Margery Greenspan, executive of Mercury Records, explained on the Mental Floss website that the brothers’ style evolved, under his leadership, “from Gap to Urban Outfitters. At first there was a bit of resistance, but I think in the end they liked to feel a bit more avant-garde.”
As soon MMMBop landed on the radio on April 15, 1997, the trio faced marathon days of interviews, photo sessions and small promotional concerts. They were everywhere. They both appeared on the David Letterman show and acted in a lost mall. They wanted to show the public and the press that they were not a product orchestrated from an office. “We’ve written or co-written all of our songs and we’ve played the instruments. It is us, we are not a prefabricated band”, Isaac added in this regard in Los Angeles Times.
The aggressive strategy paid off: MMMBop reached number one in 27 countries, Middle of Nowhere (released May 6, 1997) sold 10 million copies and received three Grammy nominations. In Spain, where the song reached number three on the singles chart, the Hanson phenomenon also caught on. Above all, thanks to the youth magazines that flooded the newsstands in the nineties. Núria Cantero, editor of the defunct super pop, recalls the coverage that was given between 1997 and 1998: “The readers were always more interested in Taylor and Zac than in Isaac, the oldest of the three. For months we received many letters in the newsroom asking us to talk about Hanson. We dedicated a cover to them, several central posters and all kinds of reports. The characters used to last us because, although they did not generate much content, we knew how to dose them.
“Because practically no one had access to the Internet and social networks did not yet exist, this was the only way for fans to get to know their favorite artists in depth. Beyond the songs, they were interested in knowing everything about his personality”, points out the journalist. That yes, his presence in the publication was gradually diminishing: “In 1999 we no longer got almost anything from them because they stopped being interesting and there were other characters, like Leonardo DiCaprio, who worked better. Theirs lasted as long as it had to last”.
“When you listen MMMBop I really liked it, it was one of those songs that I didn’t consider a guilty pleasure. Yes, they were between 11 and 16 years old, but because of their aesthetics I related them more to groups of post-grunge commercials like Candlebox or the first Redd Kross, who also started out as kids and weren’t given much ball, “says Joan S. Luna, editor-in-chief of the veteran music magazine Sound world. “We never published a review of Middle of Nowhere because, as the title indicated, they were in the middle of nowhere. Were they your typical teen pop group? No. Rock? Either. Apart from MMMBop Did they have another equally massive success around here? The answer is already known. They ended up being meat of the one hit wonder because they never had that same impact again.”
a new world
In 1997 Mercury Records tried to stretch the gum of Middle of Nowhere with an album of Christmas carols (Snowed In), and the following year with a reissue of the self-produced MMMBop from 1996 (3 Car Garage: The Indie Recordings ‘95–’96) and a direct from their first international tour (Live from Albertane). However, when they returned in 2000 with their second proper studio album, This Time Around, NSYNC, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears already reigned in the radio formula and the world was different.
“We were surrounded by a lot of people who just wanted something to be successful. They suggested that we work with a producer pop or with someone oriented to the boy bands and things like that. We met with all the producers we wanted to work with and some of the most incredible producers of the moment, including Ric Ocasek [el fallecido líder de The Cars]. That was what we pursued from the beginning: to say no to pop trends”, recalled Taylor in Billboard Two years ago.
Despite the good reviews it received This Time Around, commercially it was a failure: in three years they went from selling 10 million copies to only one million. The fact that right before Mercury Records was taken over by Island/Def Jam affected sales and promotion. Although the situation only got worse with the third. As they recorded in the documentary Strong Enough to BreakDirected by Ashley Greyson, the executives rejected close to a hundred songs arguing that they “were not suitable for radio”.
As expected, Hanson left and in 2003 founded 3CG Records, an independent label that allows them to release whatever they want without having to explain to anyone. Without going any further, in 2018 they published String Theory -where they reviewed the best of their discography together with the Prague Symphony Orchestra- and last year Against The World, his seventh job.
“It seems that they have disappeared, but the truth is that they have never stopped playing. They have such a defined audience niche that, instead of performing all over the world, they can afford not to leave their country. That is why we have never seen them live in Spain”, argues Luna. “The United States is so big that its artists can organize local tours and support themselves financially without problems. Just because they don’t come to Europe often doesn’t mean their careers are over.”
Between adoration and suspicion
Since 2013 direct Hanson Brothers Beer, its own brand of craft beers. And following in the footsteps of their parents, in these years they have had so many children with their respective wives that they could put together a soccer team: Isaac has three, Taylor seven and Zac five.
Although during their peak of fame they did not star in any controversy or later fall into the spirals of self-destruction that other teen idols have starred in, in May 2020 websites such as Vice The Vulture they echoed the suspicion with which many fans received the silence of the group after the murder of George Floyd at a time when social networks were filled with tributes, complaints and mourning. Finally on June 9, more than two weeks later, they did, disabling the ability to leave comments. in that photograph.
Still in the spotlight, those same days a Pinterest account was leaked in which Zac had shared memes racist, transphobic, homophobic, sexist and pro-gun. What Vice revealed in an extensive report, compared the right to use an AR-15 rifle to Rosa Parks’ right to sit on a bus. The youngest of the group apologized. “None of that surprised me,” says Luna. “Behind those smiles and that pose against the nihilism of the bands of the moment there were some very specific principles: those of deep America. As much as it shocks us, we shouldn’t forget that they live in one of the most conservative states in the country.”
With his reputation touched, last year Hanson participated in the fifth edition of the program The Masked Singer. Disguised as matryoshkas, for several weeks the Fox presented them with a magnificent showcase to clean up their image. The plan worked: in May they will release a new album titled Red Green Blue and, the following month, they will start an extensive international tour in Europe. In Spain, for now, they have no intention of making any stops.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.