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Showing posts from 2017

Finally, It's Christmas (even if it's October)

Disclaimer: I'm a bad fan, and I'm not really into the whole Christmas songs thing. When I got the download, I gave it a spin and thought it was okay, but wasn't planning to listen to it again until maybe a couple of days before the Manchester show in December. But then Kelly wrote a #nerdingout thread and, well, the call of dissecting music was too strong to resist. So I've listened to it a few more times, and yes, Kelly made me do it. Second Disclaimer: I only know a couple of the original songs anyway. Santa Taylor in Milan, December 2013 1. Finally, It's Christmas - I loved this song anyway, from Christmas 2014, and the new, revamped version is great. I love the Beach Boys-like intro and I agree with Kelly that the drums solo is really cool. As a live song, Hanson played it at the Mexico BTTI in 2015 and I can testify that it sounded great. 2. Wonderful Christmas Time/Come On It's Christmas - I don't know about other countries but here in t

In Color - A Review

Somebody That Wants To Love You Who are you? When I first heard this song in “The Making of In Color” stream, I knew it reminded me of something. A famous song from the 1980s...another soft-rock anthem. Finally, it came to me: it was Berlin’s "Take My Breath Away ", only slowed down. Try and sing the verse from one song to the other’s melody and it almost fits perfectly. (Don't call your copyright lawyer though: by the time the chorus starts, STWTLY is a totally different song.) This 80s pop/rock vibe has become Hanson’s predominant style in the last 3 EPs - Loud, Play and In Color: it’s upbeat, it makes for catchy songs and the fans’ reception has been consistently positive. STWTL could almost be a companion to "Stop Me in My Tracks" from last year’s Loud EP, with its powerful guitar riffs and sing-along-able chorus, not to mention the universally pleasing Taylor vocals. Let’s delve into the lyrics now: Long before the spotlight You were part of my

A BTTI Post-Mortem - Part 2: Sketches from the Island

CH-CH-CHANGES The programme landed in our inboxes in mid-December to a mixed reaction. The schedule was substantially different from previous years: the shows (with the exception of the welcoming show) would start a lot earlier, and two out of three ‘activities with the band’ would take place afterwards. The activities would be Cards Against Humanity and Family Feud - i.e. different kind of party games to what some fans had been hoping for: sack races, egg and spoon races and other such games of the type I’d endured at church group trips in my childhood*. As we already knew, there would only be one ‘craft’ type of activity, tie dye, with a notable change: all three Hanson would take part at the same time. [*I believe these games, when forced upon an adult in the captive-like conditions of a youth camp or, equally, of all-inclusive vacation, openly contravene the Geneva Conventio n: Convention I: the Convention prohibits [...] assaults upon personal dignity.] The news about the ga

A BTTI 2017 Post-Mortem - Part 1: Dissecting the Shows

It was only going to be a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience: the solo sets had sold it to me, and besides, I’d never seen Hanson play with the full band. A one-off. Yes, it was only going to be a one-off. Well, that was 2015. On a grey and wet British New Year’s Day, I boarded a Jamaica-bound flight, ready to do it all again for the third time in 2017. Those who have read my blog posts from BTTI 2016 might remember that I wasn’t exactly awestruck by last year’s event: I’d found the shows lacking something, not to mention I'd been left seriously disappointed by Isaac’s solo set (for an Isaac ‘girl’, this is a serious matter). Aside from having fallen in love with Jamaica, I guess my mixed feelings about 2016 were part of the reason for wanting to go back: I had such fantastic memories of the 2015 shows in Cancun that I wanted another taste of that experience. I knew BTTI was more than a holiday with friends: it was a chance for me, as a European fan, to load up on Hanson conc