Boats, Birthdays and Mixing Music

When March 14 comes around the Hanson fan world goes nuts.
Everyone likes a birthday, sure, but this is no ordinary birthday. This is Taylor Hanson’s birthday. This year, it was an ultra special day as Taylor reached 30 years.

Fans showed their love with a determined and organised effort to see him trending on twitter, or with posts of Taylor and Me pictures to drool over.

It seems that Taylor’s own plans included some Miami cruising with his “beautiful family,” followed by late night dune buggying.

Such is the love for Taylor, that fans celebrated as if it was their own birthday or at the very least, as if it were a world wide party that there was an open invitation to.

Else where, Taylor’s birthday did not go by unnoticed. Magazines published stories with their own particular spin, underlining the inevitable passing of time and its effects on both Taylor and the onlooker. This rather clichéd approach to reporting Hanson is old news. As fans know all too well, everyone is expected to grow up, live a life and develop a future, everyone that is except Hanson.

http://www.okmagazine.com/news/ok-old-school-happy-birthday-our-90s-crush-taylor-hanson

http://popdust.com/2013/03/14/taylor-hanson-beautiful-face-woman/

More interesting perhaps is the fact that several famous others share their birthday with Taylor.

Einstein, whose face features in the MMMBop video and Quincy Jones, whose music credentials include being a close friend of Ray Charles, producing the Thriller album and 79 Grammy nominations, were both born on this day.

The association of Taylor Hanson with creative and musical giants might be preferable to the musings over his luscious looks, but maybe, at the end of the day, it has to be both.

What fans have always seen and the rest have missed, is that the power in the beauty of Taylor’s face and demeanor, whether at the age of 14 or 30, is his love for his life and art. When caught on camera mid-show, his raw energy has a beauty which some see as pure sex appeal and others see as tender, naive and charming.
When being interviewed, Taylor, ever the consummate professional, conveys a physical presence that seasoned actors might hope to emulate.

These things have never been about age. For Taylor, the young boy or the man, there has always been a charm and an authenticity and it is in the passion for the music. The common denominator for Taylor, younger or older, is the music.

So, we go back a few days before the birthday and find Hanson in the studio in Miami, mixing the next album with the help of an old friend, Tom Lord-Alge.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr00/articles/tomlord.htm

Put the Miami-mixing together with news of a revamped Hanson.net and mid-March 2013 is not just Taylor’s birthday. It is a big step closer to album 6.

The 20^th picture 307, which invites references to the original Rat Pack, underlines how the new music is all consuming for the band at the moment – And the last few weeks have shown they make this music against the backdrop of friends, family, fans and a life full to the brim – having fun, making and living their music.

If birthdays offer an opportunity for reflection, it may be interesting to consider what one of the Rat Pack members, Frank Sinatra is quoted as saying,

“I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good friends, fine family – and I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that, actually”.

Who could wish Hanson and Taylor in particular, anything less.

• Tags: band, birthday, Hanson, hanson.net, music, new, new album, rat pack, Taylor Hanson