When I was young and innocent(er), I loved Hanson. Not so much in an ickily romantic kind of way (though if asked I'd have claimed to have a crush on Taylor, because at the time it was something like a social obligation for girls older than Zach but younger than Isaac to have a crush on Taylor); after all, the first few times I saw the video for Mmmbop I assumed the younger two were girls. (This is ironic, because at the time I had short hair, and everyone thought I was a boy. There's a lesson in there, somewhere.) What attracted me to Hanson then was their irrepressible sense of fun as is evident from the video for Mmmbop: they rollerblade (and fall over), catch a taxi and don't wear seat belts, ride a bus (a thrilling experience when first done without adult supervision that, alas, gets old fast), and at one point Zach emerges from a bin. Just because.
Recently, I stumbled across a couple of songs from their latest album, Anthem, and realised that I still love Hanson. But I also noticed that they occasionally reproduce misogynist conservative stereotypes in their lyrics. So I decided to have a look at the representation of women and love in Hanson songs, from Middle of Nowhere to the present day, strictly in the interests of dispassionate research and not at all because I wanted to go back and listen to it all again.
Middle of Nowhere (1997):
For an album mostly written by three boys who had not fully completed the journey through puberty, there is a great deal of focus on love, romance and girls. Overall, these songs are reminiscent of children parroting things they have heard about love and relationships. 'Where's the Love' exemplifies this bafflement in the first line: 'Something's been going on, and I don't know what it is'. The depth of their confusion is made apparent in the bridge:
We're separating, consciousness is fading
Are you thinking that it's me you're fooling?
Where's the right in, all of our fighting?
Look at, look at, look at what we're doing
In Middle of Nowhere there are also reflections on non-romantic love. 'I Will Come To You' has almost pantomimic Christian overtones in both lyrics and video (the band wander around crowded streets surrounded bodily by halos of golden light - I'm still not sure why); these are incongruously mixed with what may be a breakup narrative (occupational hazard of writing by teenagers, perhaps). Then there is 'With You In Your Dreams', which they wrote about the death of their grandmother.
This Time Around (2000):
The tweenage years: 'If Only' is a convincingly realised expression of teenage love. By this I mean that it is self-contradictory, nonsensical, and contains far more borderline constipated emotion than would seem necessary for the topic in question. For example, a contradiction:
If only I had the guts to feel this way
Presumably if you didn't, you wouldn't, and so you wouldn't be worrying about it. But clearly the speaker is confused; take a look at the first verse, for instance:
Well every single time I see you it's like I feel this way
It makes me wonder if I am ever gonna feel this way again.
There's a picture that's hanging in the back of my head
I see it over and over
I wanna hold you and love you in my arms and then
I wanna need you 'cause I need to be with you till the end
Then I hear myself reply "You've got to hold it in" this time tonight
This is a portrait of a first love, where the subject is feeling things that are unfamiliar and strange and weird, and doesn't know if they want to feel them, or if they have a choice, and thus self-contradictory nonsense and talking to oneself ensues. Full marks for verisimilitude - it's like the inner monologue of the main character approximately three-quarters of the way through every Young Adult novel ever.
Underneath (2004):
'Penny and Me' perhaps contains the most rounded female character in any of Hanson's songs; the chorus describes a series of activities the speaker and Penny enjoy together, pointing to a shared experience which creates the potential for real communication:
Cause Penny and me like to roll the windows down
Turn the radio up, push the pedal to the ground
And Penny and me like to gaze at starry skies
Close our eyes, pretend to fly
It's always Penny and me tonight
Admittedly, the things they enjoy doing together are an homage to the most prevalent of romantic cliches, but nevertheless, Penny emerges from this as a character; we are told about what she likes to do, as well:
Penny likes to get away and drown her pain in lemonade
Penny dreams of rainy days and nights up late by the fireplace
And aimless conversations about the better days
Not sure what the deal is with the lemonade, but the speaker's understanding of her and knowledge of the things she likes to do creates a positive image of a romantic relationship. He may not like to drown his pain in lemonade, however it is one does that, but he's happy to hang out anyway. According to some dodge site on the internet, Hanson have said that Penny is actually a symbol for music, and the song is full of references to music mixed in with oblique references to personal experiences. 'Penny' is named after the Beatles' 'Penny Lane', and there are references to Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon'.
Things go a little way downhill in the next couple of albums; both 'Give A Little' (Shout it Out, 2010) and 'Get the Girl Back' (Anthem, 2013) are variations on the theme of verb-that-noun, in which the subject is the man and the object is the woman.
'Give A Little' is particularly hopeless in this regard. Lyrically, it consists of a list of statements of what 'she' means and wants. It ventriloquises the lowest common denominator of magazine dating tips:
You gotta show her why she can't resist
Make her blush when you put your hand on her hips
She's gonna keep on playing until you stop chasing
So wrap your arms around her body
Tell her all she needs to know
This is revisited in the second stanza:
You gotta show her, when she can't decide
You gotta hold her, with that look in your eyes
When you move in close, take your time
Leave an empty shoulder, let her move in closer
And wrap your arms around her body
Tell her all she needs to know
The repetition of 'tell her all she needs to know' positions the man in control of all information, the woman being given what he determines that she 'needs to know', and thus eroding her agency - this is reinforced by the opening of the second stanza, 'you gotta show her, when she can't decide': the man must help the feeble-brained female by telling her what to do, because obviously she can't decide for herself, right? The message is that unless the man shows the woman who is boss, she will wander off and sleep with other people. This is not really representative of the way human relationships work.
This is reiterated in 'Thinking 'Bout Somethin' ' (Shout it Out, 2010), which features a man emotionally distancing himself from a faithless woman. This is sort of disappointing, because the chorus hook 'I've been thinking 'bout somethin' other than you' could be a refreshing reference to the fact that there is more to life than romance. Unfortunately, this idea is put to rest when the song ends with the line 'I've been getting the love that moves me while you've been getting around' - the joke's on you, faithless woman, the Man doesn't even miss you...
Nevertheless, both songs have a sort of tongue-in-cheek cheerfulness, created by the combination of lively rhythms, catchy guitar riffs and canny use of brass; combined with the almost frenetic cheerfulness of the video clips (featuring much silly dancing and the wearing of old ladies' golf visors), it is actually quite hard to think of these as texts deliberately undermining the subjectivity of women. The songs and videos retain the spirit of fun apparent in the 'Mmmbop' video, with a richer, matured sound, if, sadly, lacking much depth of reflection on gender politics and the human condition.
'Get the Girl Back' raises suspicions with its title: who is this nameless girl, and why must she be got? And do you mean seduce her once again, or get revenge because she dared do something you didn't like? Having said that, the song is not as bad as it seems at first. The chorus hook is 'you've got to get the girl back on your side'; getting someone on your side does not imply they are a possession in the same way the 'get the girl back' does out of context - however, it still refers to 'the girl', as though the female gender is an empty signifier, and not an infinitely variable collection of individuals (is it a specific girl that must be 'got back on one's side', or just any girl as a representative of the female gender? Who knows? Should we care?).
Yet the omnipresent 'she' in Hanson's lyrics is not necessarily always a manifestation of unthinking erasure of female individuality - rather it may display a little-discussed aspect of male/female relations: the male experience of the female gaze. For example, the 'you' in 'River' (3 Car Garage, 1998).
Lately we've been talkin' 'bout who we are
Seems we don't know anymore
And all this time that we've been thinkin'
At night I've been dreamin' about youAnd I know you don't believe me when I say
I'll love you 'till the end - forever and a day
And I guess we'll never know
Exactly where this river's gonna flow
And I guess we'll never understand
Until we reach that promised land
So I guess we'll
I guess we'll never know
The chorus is a reflection on the unpredictability of life; however, it also functions as a reflection on the impossibility of truly complete understanding between individuals, and the relationship between this impossibility of understanding and the difficulty of articulating individual identity. So all in all, there are some interesting reflections on love, relationships and women in the works of Hanson. They just need to steer clear of that whole empty-signifier 'girl' thing. I mean, I understand the impulse to write about an anonymous and generalised love-symbol, particularly if you have a wife who may take it personally if you air the details of your sex life in your lyrics, but there is some middle ground. For How To Do It, see Jeff Buckley's 'Lover, you should have come over' and 'Last Goodbye'. Perhaps the secret is to omit gender if you're going to omit names...
One of the things that becomes apparent through looking at the progression of Hanson's albums is how much their music, and particularly the quality of their voices, has matured over time. All you need to look at to see just how formidable they are as musicians is their cover of 'Ain't no Sunshine'. Anthem is a good pop album, but who knows, if their lyrical ability catches up with their musicianship, they may yet produce an adult album legitimately described as 'great'. I'm less optimistic about Chris Cornell - watch this space for my deconstruction of his career.
Recently, I stumbled across a couple of songs from their latest album, Anthem, and realised that I still love Hanson. But I also noticed that they occasionally reproduce misogynist conservative stereotypes in their lyrics. So I decided to have a look at the representation of women and love in Hanson songs, from Middle of Nowhere to the present day, strictly in the interests of dispassionate research and not at all because I wanted to go back and listen to it all again.
Middle of Nowhere (1997):
For an album mostly written by three boys who had not fully completed the journey through puberty, there is a great deal of focus on love, romance and girls. Overall, these songs are reminiscent of children parroting things they have heard about love and relationships. 'Where's the Love' exemplifies this bafflement in the first line: 'Something's been going on, and I don't know what it is'. The depth of their confusion is made apparent in the bridge:We're separating, consciousness is fading
Are you thinking that it's me you're fooling?
Where's the right in, all of our fighting?
Look at, look at, look at what we're doing
This makes no sense - on the second run 'separating' is replaced with 'segregating', which makes marginally less sense, if anything.
Interestingly, there are two songs that address particular girls: Madeline and Lucy. Both are fantastically lacking in substance. 'Lucy' tells the story of leaving a girl called Lucy, with no other context or detail, and essentially repeats the name as a mantra. In fact, the lyrics are so sparse it is almost poetic, even if it was written by an eleven-year-old. He leaves Lucy, she cries, he misses her; in the second verse it all happens again. Then the song ends. In 'Madeline', on the other hand, the lyrics are a bit more elaborate, in that a broader vocabulary is used; even so, the scope of the song is limited. The speaker is sad, because he didn't realise Madeline was the woman (or girl) of his dreams, and now it's all a mess, and something about roses, and why can't she see they're meant to be together. It is perhaps a little stalkerish, but all in all a pretty effective distillation of unrequited romantic love, which suggests the author was not yet confused by actual feelings.
In Middle of Nowhere there are also reflections on non-romantic love. 'I Will Come To You' has almost pantomimic Christian overtones in both lyrics and video (the band wander around crowded streets surrounded bodily by halos of golden light - I'm still not sure why); these are incongruously mixed with what may be a breakup narrative (occupational hazard of writing by teenagers, perhaps). Then there is 'With You In Your Dreams', which they wrote about the death of their grandmother.
This Time Around (2000):The tweenage years: 'If Only' is a convincingly realised expression of teenage love. By this I mean that it is self-contradictory, nonsensical, and contains far more borderline constipated emotion than would seem necessary for the topic in question. For example, a contradiction:
If only I had the guts to feel this way
Presumably if you didn't, you wouldn't, and so you wouldn't be worrying about it. But clearly the speaker is confused; take a look at the first verse, for instance:
Well every single time I see you it's like I feel this way
It makes me wonder if I am ever gonna feel this way again.
There's a picture that's hanging in the back of my head
I see it over and over
I wanna hold you and love you in my arms and then
I wanna need you 'cause I need to be with you till the end
Then I hear myself reply "You've got to hold it in" this time tonight
This is a portrait of a first love, where the subject is feeling things that are unfamiliar and strange and weird, and doesn't know if they want to feel them, or if they have a choice, and thus self-contradictory nonsense and talking to oneself ensues. Full marks for verisimilitude - it's like the inner monologue of the main character approximately three-quarters of the way through every Young Adult novel ever.
Underneath (2004):
'Penny and Me' perhaps contains the most rounded female character in any of Hanson's songs; the chorus describes a series of activities the speaker and Penny enjoy together, pointing to a shared experience which creates the potential for real communication:
Cause Penny and me like to roll the windows down Turn the radio up, push the pedal to the ground
And Penny and me like to gaze at starry skies
Close our eyes, pretend to fly
It's always Penny and me tonight
Admittedly, the things they enjoy doing together are an homage to the most prevalent of romantic cliches, but nevertheless, Penny emerges from this as a character; we are told about what she likes to do, as well:
Penny likes to get away and drown her pain in lemonade
Penny dreams of rainy days and nights up late by the fireplace
And aimless conversations about the better days
Not sure what the deal is with the lemonade, but the speaker's understanding of her and knowledge of the things she likes to do creates a positive image of a romantic relationship. He may not like to drown his pain in lemonade, however it is one does that, but he's happy to hang out anyway. According to some dodge site on the internet, Hanson have said that Penny is actually a symbol for music, and the song is full of references to music mixed in with oblique references to personal experiences. 'Penny' is named after the Beatles' 'Penny Lane', and there are references to Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon'.
Things go a little way downhill in the next couple of albums; both 'Give A Little' (Shout it Out, 2010) and 'Get the Girl Back' (Anthem, 2013) are variations on the theme of verb-that-noun, in which the subject is the man and the object is the woman.
'Give A Little' is particularly hopeless in this regard. Lyrically, it consists of a list of statements of what 'she' means and wants. It ventriloquises the lowest common denominator of magazine dating tips:
You gotta show her why she can't resist
Make her blush when you put your hand on her hips
She's gonna keep on playing until you stop chasing
So wrap your arms around her body
Tell her all she needs to know
This is revisited in the second stanza:
You gotta show her, when she can't decide
You gotta hold her, with that look in your eyes
When you move in close, take your time
Leave an empty shoulder, let her move in closer
And wrap your arms around her body
Tell her all she needs to know
The repetition of 'tell her all she needs to know' positions the man in control of all information, the woman being given what he determines that she 'needs to know', and thus eroding her agency - this is reinforced by the opening of the second stanza, 'you gotta show her, when she can't decide': the man must help the feeble-brained female by telling her what to do, because obviously she can't decide for herself, right? The message is that unless the man shows the woman who is boss, she will wander off and sleep with other people. This is not really representative of the way human relationships work.
This is reiterated in 'Thinking 'Bout Somethin' ' (Shout it Out, 2010), which features a man emotionally distancing himself from a faithless woman. This is sort of disappointing, because the chorus hook 'I've been thinking 'bout somethin' other than you' could be a refreshing reference to the fact that there is more to life than romance. Unfortunately, this idea is put to rest when the song ends with the line 'I've been getting the love that moves me while you've been getting around' - the joke's on you, faithless woman, the Man doesn't even miss you...
Nevertheless, both songs have a sort of tongue-in-cheek cheerfulness, created by the combination of lively rhythms, catchy guitar riffs and canny use of brass; combined with the almost frenetic cheerfulness of the video clips (featuring much silly dancing and the wearing of old ladies' golf visors), it is actually quite hard to think of these as texts deliberately undermining the subjectivity of women. The songs and videos retain the spirit of fun apparent in the 'Mmmbop' video, with a richer, matured sound, if, sadly, lacking much depth of reflection on gender politics and the human condition.
'Get the Girl Back' raises suspicions with its title: who is this nameless girl, and why must she be got? And do you mean seduce her once again, or get revenge because she dared do something you didn't like? Having said that, the song is not as bad as it seems at first. The chorus hook is 'you've got to get the girl back on your side'; getting someone on your side does not imply they are a possession in the same way the 'get the girl back' does out of context - however, it still refers to 'the girl', as though the female gender is an empty signifier, and not an infinitely variable collection of individuals (is it a specific girl that must be 'got back on one's side', or just any girl as a representative of the female gender? Who knows? Should we care?).
Yet the omnipresent 'she' in Hanson's lyrics is not necessarily always a manifestation of unthinking erasure of female individuality - rather it may display a little-discussed aspect of male/female relations: the male experience of the female gaze. For example, the 'you' in 'River' (3 Car Garage, 1998).
Lately we've been talkin' 'bout who we are
Seems we don't know anymore
And all this time that we've been thinkin'
At night I've been dreamin' about youAnd I know you don't believe me when I say
I'll love you 'till the end - forever and a day
And I guess we'll never know
Exactly where this river's gonna flow
And I guess we'll never understand
Until we reach that promised land
So I guess we'll
I guess we'll never know
The chorus is a reflection on the unpredictability of life; however, it also functions as a reflection on the impossibility of truly complete understanding between individuals, and the relationship between this impossibility of understanding and the difficulty of articulating individual identity. So all in all, there are some interesting reflections on love, relationships and women in the works of Hanson. They just need to steer clear of that whole empty-signifier 'girl' thing. I mean, I understand the impulse to write about an anonymous and generalised love-symbol, particularly if you have a wife who may take it personally if you air the details of your sex life in your lyrics, but there is some middle ground. For How To Do It, see Jeff Buckley's 'Lover, you should have come over' and 'Last Goodbye'. Perhaps the secret is to omit gender if you're going to omit names...
One of the things that becomes apparent through looking at the progression of Hanson's albums is how much their music, and particularly the quality of their voices, has matured over time. All you need to look at to see just how formidable they are as musicians is their cover of 'Ain't no Sunshine'. Anthem is a good pop album, but who knows, if their lyrical ability catches up with their musicianship, they may yet produce an adult album legitimately described as 'great'. I'm less optimistic about Chris Cornell - watch this space for my deconstruction of his career.
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