When No One Is Listening: It’s Time to Say Goodbye to the Band I Loved
Half a lifetime ago, I went to a concert at the Tabernacle with my friend Annie. It wasn’t my first concert, but it is the first one I remember the way a favorite song makes your fingers tap absently to the beat. I was sixteen, and Annie was fifteen. She snuck a camera into the venue before cell phone cameras and smartphones were a thing, and flash photography bans empowered security guards to shout at excited teenage girls. She hid the camera in her bra. I still have copies of the grainy and dark photographs she took.
The entry line twisted around Downtown Atlanta. I remember being amazed by the crowd. Predominantly young women, the attendees laughed and danced with anticipation. We made friends in that line. For an hour or two, the concert goers in front of and behind us became our very best friends as we sang along to “Lost without Each Other.”
Queues like that became part of a ritual for me in subsequent years. Whether I was in Boston or Asheville or back in Atlanta, I’d make a pilgrimage to stand in line with hundreds of young (and then not-so-young) women and men like me, cheerfully anticipating the doors opening at 7:00 p.m. and the shared experience grounded in our love of our favorite band. Afterward, I’d brag to outsiders, “Hanson fans are just so kind to one another — and the band is so kind to us.”
There’s another story, too. When I was in college. Hanson visited the campus as part of their tour promoting the release of their 2006 documentary about the music industry, Strong Enough to Break. My friend Lauren knew I was a fan, and she invited me as her guest to a taping of the student-run late night show. After the show, she tugged me to the sound stage to, for real, meet the band.
The band’s handler was anxious to get the guys to their next interview, and my face fell as they started to walk away. But then Taylor saw me and my pathetic printout of a band photo and shouted to his brothers to wait. He came back and asked if I wanted an autograph, and all three brothers signed the photograph. It was such a small moment, but it cemented my belief that the Hanson brothers were good guys.
I still want to believe they are good guys.
In the March 22, 2018, episode of the WBUR podcast Edge of Fame, host Geoff Edgers looks at how Hanson not only became a phenomenon in 1997, but continued to make albums, sell out concerts, weather music industry upheavals, and avoid scandals for twenty-five years. He suggests three reasons for their ongoing success:
- The band’s consistent vision for their music inspired by classic rock ’n’ roll and pop music from artists like Michael Jackson, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry
- Early clarity on the responsibility of the brothers to make decisions about their own careers and the music they want to make
- The impenetrable wall separating the personal from professional and the commitment to and close-guarded privacy of their family
But while these ideals fueled the launch of their own record label and their subsequent accomplishments, the insular, isolationist approach to managing their careers does not protect them from the public missteps that reveal opinions ill-aligned with fan expectations of these good guys.
Earlier this year, a clip emerged featuring behind-the-scenes footage of Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson. About 1-minute long, the clip appears to be from the filming for the Theory of Everything DVD released in 2018. In it, Zac Hanson uses refugees to make a metaphor about songwriting.
“Think of them like refugees,” he begins. “They showed up here, but you didn’t ask them to come. And you don’t want bad things for them, but you just don’t have space for them.”
Taylor appears to weakly start to refute his brother before continuing the conversation. And the clip ends.
The clip featuring Zac did not make major news, but Hanson is not a band known for news making. Their carefully curated professional personalities have allowed them to protect their families and themselves from the endless cycle of celebrity news and gossip. The band will talk about the music, talk about their passion, and they will talk about their support of charitable causes. They will not talk about politics or religion, and they will not talk about their personal beliefs beyond their music.
The wall separating personal from professional cracked further later this year. As other artists called on their fans to march, to vote, and to stand up for what they believed in, Hanson did not. It shouldn’t have been surprising that the band remained steadfastly apolitical, but something felt different. The act of remaining apolitical no longer seems professional in a world where it is increasingly clear that the status quo is harmful to our most vulnerable. By ignoring the cries from fans to take a stand, Hanson seemed to say that they were perfectly fine with the world the way it was.
Most egregiously, following the May 25 murder of George Floyd, the band took days to release a statement. Instead, they published content about a rocket launch and their initiative to support music venues closed due to COVID-19. Only after the backlash from fans hurt and confused by the absence of a response is one made to the band’s official social media on June 5. Isaac and Taylor Hanson made public posts to their individual accounts. Despite a multitude of interviews where the bandmates discussed their admiration for Black music, Zac Hanson did not address Black Lives Matter at all.
In her November 10 expose, Ashley Spencer explores the cracks in the previously tight-knit community of Hanson fans. The fans she interviewed are heartbroken — but not at the revelation of the conservative politics of the band. Despite the band’s commitment to maintaining their privacy, Hanson’s political inclinations were never a true secret. Fans are disappointed in the brothers’ unwillingness to speak and stand by the people they claim to draw inspiration from.
It is a very modern problem, born from the influx of information granted by social media and compounded by political division. Artists don’t get to be apolitical anymore — and certainly not when they are profiting off music inspired by Black artists who fought for civil and human rights. At best, the laggard response to the murders of Black men and women is insensitive — and perhaps it could be remedied with the support of a skilled publicist. At worst, it’s a symptom of the personal beliefs that have been there all along. Subsequent content from Isaac about holiday and religious gatherings and his frustration with mask requirements indicate the latter — as does the overzealous moderation of comments from fans expressing alarm.
It is alarming.
When you are an award-winning musician, when you have a platform as large as Hanson, you have a responsibility to your fans to answer for your words and actions. Privacy is not necessarily incompatible with modern social media, but stubborn disregard for the cultural and political implications of being “apolitical” amidst the dual pandemics of police brutality and COVID-19 is irresponsible and wrong.
And when you are a fan who has spent years attending concerts, buying albums, and following social media, the knowledge that the people you admire are not what you imagined is disorientating. It feels like a betrayal. It’s embarrassing. Of course, I recognize that I am a 34-year-old woman with a marriage and two kids: I should not be heartbroken by the boy band I gushed over as a teenager. And yet, the pain and disappointment is still there.
But I think I can cherish the good and wonderful things from my adolescence, and I can demand more of the artists who create them. The lives and dignity of my black and brown peers are more important than the next album and concert, and I hold the brothers accountable for the words they speak — or don’t speak — when they think no one is listening.
SOURCES
“Hanson Beat the System,” Edge of Fame, WBUR, March 22, 2018, accessed November 5, 2020, https://www.wbur.org/geoffedgers/2018/03/22/hanson-beat-the-system.
“Zac’s thoughts on refugees,” Reddit, forum post by /u/franklymydeer, accessed November 5, 2020, https://www.reddit.com/r/postHanson/comments/gyto5x/zacs_thoughts_on_refugees_its_all_adding_up_now/.
Graham Gremore, “Isaac Hanson says COVID-19 is part of a government plot in the war on Christmas,” Queerty, November 4, 2020, accessed November 5, 2020, https://www.queerty.com/isaac-hanson-says-covid-19-part-government-plot-war-christmas-20201104.
Ashley Spencer, “Hanson Is Facing a Mutiny From Its Own Fans,” Vice, November 10, 2020, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7aep4/hanson-is-facing-a-mutiny-from-its-own-fans.
Hanson, @hanson, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/hanson/.
Isaac Hanson, @isaachanson, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/isaachanson/
Taylor Hanson, @taylorhanson, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/taylorhanson/
Zachary Hanson, @zachanson, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/zachanson
