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| No, this isn't my photo...I was too far away to get such a great shot .Source |
You know, someday they'll be old and we'll all be old and we'll still be going to the concerts, just us hard-cores. And we'll be like all those "tom toms" who still go nuts for Tom Jones.
She completely agreed, and we both laughed.
Why will we still be coming back?
For the same reason we've been coming back for the last 15 years.
Our history of loving Hanson is largely our history of loving music itself.
At the age of 11 I fell in love, not so much the way some girls did, with their lipstick covered posters of their teen idol faces.
I fell in love with the idea that there were these three young people who loved what they did so much that devoted their whole life to it and doing it well. Most people think Hanson dropped off the earth like so many other one-hit-wonders and yes, they may have fallen off the mainstream radar sometime after Mmmbop left the airwaves, (to their great benefit). But they continued on their own, crafting music that has grown and matured along with themselves and their following of die-hards that continue to show up for every show screaming, jumping, dancing, clapping and singing along every lyric to every song.
To paraphrase Taylor Hanson from an interview about a year ago, "if we weren't able to be creating and performing music to the crowds of fans that we are today, we would still be doing this anyway, only we'd be on the side of the road with a guitar case open in front of us. You have to be crazy to be in this industry, you literally have to love it enough to be crazy enough to do it."
That passion is what comes to life in Hanson's music and that energy is what comes to life when they perform. I've been lucky enough now to go to three shows with my (awesome and also enthusiastic) husband in the last 4 years and honestly, I have yet to be disappointed. (okay, fine at the show in Vancouver, the sound quality was terrible and we were all a little ticked that they took the stage so late...but we're a pretty forgiving lot, us "fansons").
Oh I know this is all gushy and slightly ridiculous...I rewrote this post several times and got choked up a couple times in the process...yes, also ridiculous I know, but I'm willing to take the fallout from revealing this. I know most of those who read this will think I'm off my rocker and never give a second thought to listening to, let alone deeply appreciating Hanson's music the way I do. Believe me, you don't have to...that's not why I wrote this.
I wrote this because all these years I have been poked fun at for this crazy devotion and always been a little abashed at putting into words exactly what it is that makes me such a nut for these guys. Anyway, I know I haven't done it all justice...but at least I tried.
On Friday night, singing along with every line of every song, I was hit by some pretty strong nostalgia. Sure Hanson wanders off the radar of my life for months at a time (after all, I do have a real life too) but I always circle back to their music and it definitely makes up the soundtrack of more than half of my life so far. There's something universal about music in that we all connect to it in this simple profound way and there are times when you hear a song and something about the notes or the words affect you and you think "Yes, I get that...I've felt that way too."
15 years of that feeling is why we'll keep coming back. 15 years of music being created because it mattered, that's why it matters still....that's why it will still matter then.
and that's why we'll keep coming back.
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| Smiles like this are a direct result of Hanson music...just so you know. source |
