NOT ONLY ARE THEY THE CUTEST BROS AROUND, HANSON HAVE TOTALLY CORNERED THE WORLD POP SCENE. FRESH FROM THEIR VISIT TO AUSTRALIA, WE CHAT TO ISAAC, TAYLOR, AND ZAC ABOUT MMMBOPPING TO THE TOP.
How did Hanson get started?
Isaac: Zac was just six, Taylor was almost nine, and I was 11.
Taylor: Isaac wrote his first song when he was eight years old, I started harmonising with him, and then Zac came in, too. We were living in South America at the time, so that song was written about people living on the streets with no money.
Taylor: Once we started performing in front of crowds, we thought, "Yeah, we like this." Signing autographs, seeing people react, that's what attracted us.
Zac: We want to keep doing music all our lives. If we're old and grey and we've never sold a record, we'll still love music.
Does it bother you at all when people compare MMMBop and Hanson to the Jackson 5?
Taylor: No, to be compared to them is cool.
Zac: But we're different because The Jackson 5 focused on Michael. We're not like that.
Isaac: That's not what we want to happen. The Jackson 5 didn't all play instruments, either, and they didn't all sing leads. We do. Zac sings "Man From Milwaukee", and I sing "A Minute Without You" and we all trade-off during different songs. A lot of the time people don't know exactly who's singing, like when Zac does some of the really high notes even when Taylor's singing lead on that particular song.
Is your song "Man From Milwaukee" really about aliens?
Zac: It's really just a stupid song.Taylor: Yeah. Zac's got some very deep songs.
Zac: I've got one about a frog, one about an alligator, and one about a mushroom, called "Mushroom in the Garden".
What kind of music do you like to listen to at home?
Taylor: Whatever's out right now. No Doubt, Spice Girls, the Cardigans, Aerosmith, Spin Doctors, Counting Crows, and R&B like Boyz II Men, and Blackstreet, and a lot of rap.
How do you cope with doing schoolwork these days?
Isaac: We do home school. Our parents teach us, and that has given us more opportunity to pursue our music dreams.
Taylor: Travelling and going places has helped a lot. We've seen some things that we would never see back home, and that you couldn't learn in class.
What schoolwork are you really bad at?
Taylor: I've never been really great at mathematics. I don't think anybody could like just numbers.
Isaac And because we're all very auditory, we're not that great at spelling. We learn a lot by hearing. It makes sense that musicians would be auditory. I do mathematics pretty well, but once I got to algebra, I started not liking it as much anymore.
Zac: I set fire to things! No, my best subject is probably creative spelling.
Do you see much of your home and friends these days?
Taylor: In the last few months we've moved around quite a lot.
Isaac: We catch up with our friends and make sure we're still connected.
Taylor: We've just turned our garage into a band room----carpeted it, heated it. Now we're drawing all over the walls making murals. We drove to LA to make the album with all our equipment and stuff, so now we're drawing a mural of our trip from Oklahoma, across the desert and all the way to LA.
What do your friends back home think of your success?
Isaac: They have a lof of fun with it. My best friend, his brothers and two other friends all work at the same pizza place, and when they were cleaning up and taking orders, they turned on MTV to see if we were one, and within about five minutes, there we are doing MMMBop. They stopped what they were doing and just went crazy.What songs on the album are writted about your own lives?
Isaac: A few of them. Life can get a bit scary. The song "With You in Your Dreams" is about our grandma. She was dying when we wrote it, and it's basically what she said to us--"Don't cry, I'll be with you in your dreams".
Zac: The sick thing is, someone thought that it was about a one-night stand. So, if anybody hears that song, no, it's not about that. Come on, we're 16, 14, and 11--what are you thinking about?!
Do girls treat you differently now that you're famous?
Taylor: If there's a girl who's a fan and she's a bit crazy, you are not gonna go out with her.
Isaac: We've met a lot of really good friends who were fans to begin with and you can tell when fans are so obsessed with you that they wouldn't be able to concentrate on getting to know you. It's not hard to figure out.
Do you ever get nervous when you're performing onstage?
Isaac: At first, but once you get on and start singing, the juices start flowing and it doesn't faze you.
Zac: You come offstage and say,"Wow, did that happen already?"
Taylor: That's the coolest thing, seeing people react when you play live.
How have your parents helped you to achieve your success?
Taylor: Our mom was always on the phone getting bookings, our dad was helping us carry the equipment.
ZAC: We saw this thing about Tiger Woods---Tiger fulfills his father's dream. This isn't our parent's thing. This is us. This is our dream.
Out of the tree of you, who is the best dancer?
Taylor: Who's the best dancer? Well.......
Isaac: Uh, I don't---that's a really odd question to ask us.
Taylor: In what way do you mean?
Isaac: Yeah, I don't think that that's enough......
Zac: (laughs) Because we don't know the way we dance.....
Taylor: I don't know if there's any answers to that. You'd have to ask us when we're having a dance competition. (laughs)
OK, who'd be the first to play a practical joke on the other two?
Taylor: That's another very difficult question to answer.
Isaac: We all love practical jokes, we are always playing practical jokes on our friends and on each other.
Taylor: It could be anyone of us three.
Who is the biggest slob?
Zac: You're calling me a slob?! (laughs)
Taylor: I'm probably the slobbiest.....
Isaac: You should see our room. It's not exactly the cleanes place in the world. We are not neat freaks.
Who'd be the first of you three to get married?
Taylor: I have no idea. (Points to Isaac and laughs) No, Isaac's always been the....he's always been more of the settled-down type.
Zac: Not really settled down, just the get-married type. (laughs)
Taylor: I think we're still all pretty young to....
Isaac: Yeah, we've got a long way to go.....
Zac: Yeah, a long way time. (laughs)
What's the craziest thing you'd heard about Australia before you came here for a visit?
Zac: That you're all upside down. (smiles cheekily)
Taylor: That the koalas are really dangerous. (laughs)
Isaac: They're creepy, though, because aren't they, like, drunk from whatever it is that they eat? I don't know, but Australia is definitely something we've been thinking about.
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