Album Chart Show
London, England
20 January 2005

SIMON: …and this probably happens everywhere you go, but I had to push my way through a crowd of mainly young ladies outside.

ISAAC: Yeah, well, you know… hey…

ZAC: We are lucky to have amazing, devoted fans.

SIMON: But things have moved on, you know? You're not the young chaps that-you are, but you're old now, most of you.

TAYLOR: Well, we're still young in the scheme of life, but in our early 20s instead of our early teens. I think what's really cool about this record and kind of where we are now is seeing those fans kind of move along with us and change. You always seem to connect most significantly with your peers, and our peers now are… Isaac's 24, I'm 21, Zac's 19. They're in a very different place but they're still energetic and passionate and standing outside waiting. Aside from that, I think we're just lucky.

SIMON: Well something's worked cos they're still out there. And they're still waiting. Here's a quote from the sleeve notes of your record: "this record took a lot of courage, sweat, and tears." Why?

ISAAC: It took a lot of courage, sweat, and tears for a couple reasons. The courage part has to do with… a lot of bands, believe it or not, given the circumstances that we were in making this record, probably would have broken up. We went through a lot of label mergers and we ended up on a rap label that kind of basically didn't get what we were. We didn't see an end in sight at certain points.

TAYLOR: Well, we ended up starting our own record company. After struggling with-working with people we weren't originally signed to, that came from a different place, we said, "you know, there's no label that isn't going to be similar to this situation" and we really want to be in a position where we can own our own music, where we can find passionate people to work on a project, and where we can set ourselves up never to make a record for four years or have a process that long, and keep doing things that we really want to do, which is put the music first and, again, work with passionate people in the process.

SIMON: Was there a point where, you said "other bands would have split up," was there a point where you thought about calling it a day?

TAYLOR: Yeah, I think for us there were moments where we just knew that we had to do something different or the process would drain us even more than it already had.

SIMON: Did you actually sit down and deliberately plot some kind of path from the teen band that you were to the sort of alternative, more indie style? Did you know it was always where you wanted to end up, it was just a question of persuading other people to follow with you?

TAYLOR: You know, much about this album is really interesting cos I think a lot of it is different now. It's not as much that we're making music that comes from such a different place or that we're doing something so different artistically. I think the biggest thing is people being able to really see Hanson and it's music more for what it is because you don't have a notion of being, like, "wow, they're 14 years old! Or 16 years old!" We're guys that are in our early 20s instead of our early teens, and I think that puts the music and the message that we've always had in a perspective that allows people to really see it for what it is.

SIMON: So how would you describe it then, now?

TAYLOR: Well I think we've always had a pop sensibility. We grew up listening to Aretha Franklin and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and…

SIMON: And "Crazy Beautiful," the track we just played, would be a rather obvious example of that.

TAYLOR: Yeah! Absolutely! Very Beatles-esque in a lot of ways. You hear those influences in the sense of the style and the form of the song and that's built into our chromosomes and so I think that side of it makes us a pop band, the pop element, and then rock is the other half, which is the fact that we're just a band.

SIMON: I wonder if brothers have a slight advantage. I was talking to Neil and Tim Finn and they've got a great song on their current album about what it's like to sing with your brother. And you've just got that genetic advantage.

ZAC: Well, I think our vocal chords are more alike than anyone else's ever could be… so you do have that going for you.

TAYLOR: We have time on our side too. When you've been singing together…

SIMON: When you've been getting marriage proposals from the age of 12!

TAYLOR: What can you say!

SIMON: How tough can life be?

TAYLOR: Yes. Well, I guess we're lucky in many ways.

SIMON: When you were doing some shows over here last year, you still did the old tunes, I think "MMMBop" turned up after an hour and 20 or something like that… is there a part of you that just doesn't want to play it at all?

ISAAC: Well, we've actually historically closed shows with "MMMBop," ironically enough, even back in the day "MMMBop" was at the end of the set.

ZAC: It's just a matter of time. When you sing a song 20, 40,000 times, you know, you start to change the way you sing it together, add a harmony here or change a phrasing.

SIMON: I want to play "Dancing In The Wind." Tell us about this and then we'll play it.

ISAAC: "Dancing In The Wind" is a song kind of about… I don't know, maybe Tay would be better describing it.

TAYLOR: It's just a song about fighting the inevitable and realizing there's no way you can change whatever's about to happen but you sort of want to live in the moment and take a deep breath before the inevitable anvil is about to fall.

SIMON: Okay, well the album is out today, it's been good to have you in, thank you very much indeed, Zac, Taylor, and Isaac. They are Hanson, the album is Underneath, here's "Dancing In The Wind." Thanks guys.