Songwriting Whiz Kids Can
Do It All
By David Cantwell
"Perhaps the most pernicious strain of contemporary
criticism says one thing before it says anything else...'You
can't fool me.' I think criticism ... has a good deal to do with
a willingness to be fooled: to take an idea too far, to bet too
much on too small an object or occasion, to be caught up or even
swept away. What I am always looking for... is an objective
platform for a subjective revision of our relations to the past,
the present and the future."
--Greil Marcus, The Dustbin Of History
OK. Here's where, determined to have as much guts and honesty as
the Hanson boys themselves, I just have to go ahead and blurt it
out: Hanson's Middle Of Nowhere is, so far, my pick for 1997
Album Of The Year.
There, I've said it.
And since the truth can set you free, and give you the strength
to persevere against all obstacles, I'm plowing ahead. Even if
something better should come along in '97, I'm still certain of
two things: One, Middle Of Nowhere should be recognized as a
great album; and two, it won't be. Even those who dig Hanson's
"MMMBop"��the Single Of The Summer��are already
hedging their bets, scurrying into an armor of predictable
defenses so as not to be caught playing the fool.
The predictable defenses are predictably foolish. First off, fans
and critics are already dismissing Middle Of Nowhere because it
was made by three junior high kids, which is just another way of
saying that people don't believe kids could really have made it.
But Isaac, Taylor and Zac wrote or co-wrote all of the songs,
four of the best here (including the Single Of The Summer) all by
themselves, and they did the singing, too.
Granted they got songwriting help on the rest (Mark Hudson on a
few, Mann and Weil on another), and surely they also got a ton of
assistance from their producers (the Dust Brothers on two tracks,
Stephen Lironi on the rest). But anyone who thinks that this
assistance somehow diminishes the record isn't just dismissive of
teenagers; they simply don't understand the collaborative way,
generally, that a lot of great rock music has been made, or the
role,
specifically, that song doctors, producers and studio musicians
have regularly played in that process. Can you say: The
Corporation?
Just as predictable is the way people are calling this a
"bubblegum" record. While Hanson's debut certainly has
the kind of impossibly sweet and catchy hooks that bubblegum is
known for, a sweet pop melody, alone, does not a bubblegum record
make. The music on Middle Of Nowhere swallows bubblegum whole.
The funk-hard "Look At You," "Speechless" and
"Thinking Of You" sound like the J5 teamed up with a
post-hip-hop Ohio Players. "I Will Come To You" and
"With You In Your Dreams" are gorgeous, soaring
pop-gospel ballads. Throughout the album, Taylor Hanson's Michael
Jackson-influenced singing is far too fierce and church-based to
ever be reasonably called bubblegum.
Even if the Hanson brothers had
nothing at all to say, this'd be a cool record, worth listening
to just for the sheer visceral windows-down, summertime wonder of
it.
But bubblegum isn't just a sound. It's also a steadfastly
innocent escape-based music. And anyone who's actually listened
to Middle Of Nowhere knows it is neither. The "secret that
no one knows" about Middle Of Nowhere (to lift a line from
the "Single Of The Summer") is that the entire album is
about loss and how to move on in its wake.
"MMMBop," a song about how unpredictable and tenuous
our lives really are ("In an mmmbop, they're gone"), is
the only most obvious example. A little like a rodent-less
"Ben," "Weird" is about the loss of identity
in a world where "you don't stand out, and you don't fit
in."
Funky and rocking as all hell, "Speechless" is about a
loss of innocence. Soaring to string-inspired heights,
"Yearbook" reads like a pop ballad about the loss of a
friend who has disappeared from the viewpoint of those left
behind to worry. "Lucy," sung by the breathy-voiced
Zac, is about the loss of love. The stirring "I Will Come to
You" is about the loss of a loved one.
"With You In Your Dreams," the most completely gospel
moment on the disc, is dedicated to the memory of the boys'
grandmother and, as a huge gesture, it's even written in her
voice. The song's a dying message, an urging for those left
behind to keep on living. And though it springs from the mouths
of babes, I'm not certain I've ever heard a truer (albeit
metaphorical) testament to the way
those we love continue to guide, influence and comfort us (and
haunt us too, but that's a different song), even after they're
dead and gone. "And though my flesh is gone, hoo ohh,"
Taylor sings, "I will still be with you at all times... I
don't want you to cry and weep, hoo ohh/ I want you to go on
living your life." You can hear in Taylor's voice that this
isn't just some song; this song has to matter. And by working
from that point of view, it does.
Now, I know that for many listeners and critics it is just this
sort of song��earnest, dramatic, poignant, and as simple and
direct as real speech��that's going to drive people toward all
those face-saving defenses in the first place. Well, what else is
new? In our cynical, post-modern age, any
strong statement of hope or faith expressed sincerely, without
any poetic distance or winking irony or absent any undercurrent
of rage, is supposed to be automatically suspect ("You can't
fool me!") and to deserve instant critical trivialization.
So how in the world did three teen-age boys, who've grown up
entirely in the age of cynical grunge, create an album that so
strongly rejects cynicism as reflex? And with today's guitar rock
scene about as encouraging of big public emotional gestures as,
well, the typical homeroom, then how in the hell did these kids
find the guts to risk making an album that's so willing to just
express strong emotions in unmistakable language��and to
surround it all in larger-than-life arrangements that are
unafraid to mirror the larger-than-life way such emotions are
often felt?
Perhaps being from out-of-the-loop Oklahoma played a role in this
somehow. Certainly their home-schooling, fundamentalist Christian
parents have been doing something right, not the least of which
was home-schooling them on the Time-Life Rock & Roll CD
series. And maybe the fact that they spent several years growing
up with their parents in Venezuela, where they could have been
influenced by the unabashed emotionalism of so much Latin music,
played a
factor too. I don't know.
But I do know this album sounds like a wake-up call to anyone
with enough heart left to be paying attention, with enough guts
to let their guard down and just feel. Whether deliberately,
accidentally or instinctively (who cares?), these kids have
brought it all back home in a way today's coolest musicians and
hippest critics haven't had the guts to.
In a recent ATN column, the always-gutsy Dave Marsh noted that
meaning isn't just in the world inherently, we put it there.
Well, stuck in these emotionally cautious times (which result in
emotionally cautious music, and cautious criticism too), I find
great meaning in Middle Of Nowhere. And never more so than in a
great pop-rock, throw-down anthem called "Where's The
Love." In the bridge, calling and responding and reaching
out to his brothers, Isaac lays it
on the line, like a challenge: "We have to change our point
of view, if we want a sky of blue."
Oh my. Kids sure do say the damnedest things.