aimless conversations: like an intermission where the band keeps playing

Crazy Beautiful & Its Meaning

mrywih:
This has to be my fave song yet, Theres just so much happening in this song, the music just really gets me going i love it.....

unikorn:
it's that horn section that makes me want to dance

zeus22:
Yeah, I really hope it'll be a single.

faerieclaire:
the more i listen to it, the more i am convinced that this is one of the, if not the greatest hanson song ever. there's lots happening, but it's not like setb where it's to the point of being distracting. the piano flows so beautifully, sam put in a great bass line, and i think the horns add just enough to make it unique.

richieprep:
the more i listen to it, the more i am convinced that this is one of the, if not the greatest hanson song ever.

there's lots happening, but it's not like setb where it's to the point of being distracting. the piano flows so beautifully, sam put in a great bass line, and i think the horns add just enough to make it unique.

My thoughts exactly! How about the double drumming!?

The horn arangement reminds me of a few I loved as a kid: The Beatles' Got To Get You Into My Life, Simon And Garfunkel's Keep The Customer Satisfied and The Undertones' It's Gonna Happen. And later on The Boo Radleys Wake Up Boo. So now you know where I'm coming fromOf course I later found out that these all go back to the Stax soul records of the Sixties, like Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour and Eddie Floyd's Knock On Wood.

BoomerangBeck:
Yea I love this song it is my favorite on Underneath and I think it might become my fave hanson song ever and my fave song ever!!! Its so great!!!!

stiniso81:
This song has everything I ever wanted from Hanson... that's just it. They could might as well stop making music now cause they could never top that... well... I hope I'm wrong about that, they will probably make even better things in the future, but for now it's,

Hanson in it's perfection...

(And I really think it's the horns that's making it so perfect, it's a great song without them, it's a fantastic song and one of the best I've ever heard with them!)

fangirl:
i agree with claire. i really believe hanson have something very special on their hands with this song. everything about it, especially the production and the arrangement, is perfect.

freshspringroll:
crazy/b is one of those hanson songs that sounds so happy... yet isn't. the horns, the drums (which i only just found out taylor plays on the song, hehe), the melody... it is such a fun song to listen to and sing along to [and sometimes, dance stupidly to]... but is actually q sad...

i agree about it being a wonderful song tho. it sounds so completely different to anything else.

i really love that quote from zac where he's asked about what effect natalie (& ezra) have had on taylor and the band as a whole.... and zac says that having natalie 'makes taylor better at his craft and at what he contributes to the music' [or words to that effect]!

faerieclaire:
i really believe hanson have something very special on their hands with this song. everything about it, especially the production and the arrangement, is perfect.

i might be getting ahead of myself in saying this, but... ladies and gentlemen, i do believe this is our first musical step towards the pet sounds album. :)

CaptainAmerica:
It would be the best Hanson song if it wasn't for the Vegas-stage-show sounding horns. Sigh.

fangirl:
ah, but nick, its those horns that makes it the first step towards our very own pet sounds. im with claire, but i didnt want to say it too loud in the beginning... but its a very important step. so is lullabelle i believe, but because crazy beautiful is actually on the album, its an actual step.

dennychic:
yep this is my fav! i also think its the best song ever by them so far.....:D

hitzjazzcat:
I really appreciated the horn section on Crazy/Beautiful... jazz is my favorite kind of music, and the jazzy flavor the horns add to the song is amazing. Since I'm a trumpet major in college, I really appreciate the fact that Hanson helped arrange the horn parts. Trumpets and saxes are in totally different keys than piano and guitar and the fact that they can compose and arrange parts for brass and sax really shows their true musical talent. I also love how the song is based on triplets... you have the piano doing sixteenth note triplets and the hihat playing eighth note triplets to contrast... soooo soooo great... ROCK ON HANSON!

fangirl:
another note on the beat of the song is that zac's drums are played on the off beat, the second and the fourth of every four beats, which is very unusual. taylor's piano is acting as a percussive instrument, playing on the first and third beats.

thanks for your jazzy input hitzjazzcat!! i can't quite articulate that kind of musical knowledge. you have to stick around!

RhythmicVenus:
I've been thinking about C/B = Beginnings of a Pet Sounds, for a while now, at first it was not something i was willing to accept, but after listening to the song in my car, at a stop light, something happend. What? I'm not sure, but it clicked. Maybe it was just a simple beat, or just a chord progression, but it was there. It was kind of like being between sleeping and awake. And if you listen to the entire album in that way, you can hear the beginnings of something completely awesome in almost every song.

I now firmly believe Hanson will be THE BAND everyone respects and loves.

donatella7:
i might be getting ahead of myself in saying this, but... ladies and gentlemen, i do believe this is our first musical step towards the pet sounds album. :)

Yep. That's exactly what I was thinking. It's interesting that someone played in for a dj, and he said it would never be a radio hit because it's so "odd." To me, that's a good thing! And it applies to a few songs on the album.

I could be wrong, but I think songs like Get Up and Go, Believe and (especially) Crazy Beautiful are what the guy was talking about when he said they have a Pet Sounds in them. I like Lulla Belle a lot, but it's maybe a tad *too* much of an homage to the Beatles to include.

jessicaMIT:
So, I don't know why anyone would know this, but y'all seem to have some very interesting theories on the origins of Hanson songs... Does anyone want to take a shot at who the inspiration for Crazybeautiful is?

And while we're on the topic of origins of Hanson songs, does anyone know where to find information about the insiprations behind some of their older songs, like Lucy or Save Me, or any of them really? Maybe published in interviews somewhere...?

Thanks!

freshspringroll:
Does anyone want to take a shot at who the inspiration for Crazybeautiful is?

i believe taylor has dedicated the song at many acoustic shows to his wife, natalie :)

i'm not really aware of any specific interviews where they talk about the origins of 'lucy' or 'save me'... esp. 'save me'. i always found hanson particularly guarded about the meaning behind any of the songs on the tta album... i personally have thoughts on 'save me' tho.... it's one of the saddest (and most upsetting) hanson songs ever i think. i find practically all of the tta album quite depressing (lyric-wise)

ohh, wasn't 'lucy' about the peanuts cartoon character lucy?

pipi007:
The insperation of 'Lucy' is from the Penuts cartoon. I think its taken from the perspective of Charlie, i cant really remember. if you type it in google you could probably find the interview that they said it it. I'm not sure how i know.

faerieclaire:
"lucy" is taken from the perspective of schroder. [the guy in the purple & black stripped shirt that plays piano...my dad is a big peanuts fan, so i have had these characters drilled into my head since i was like...three. hehe.]

"crazy beautiful" is one i'll have to get back to you on. i'm still so stuck on just the music in that one, i haven't even given the lyrics a thought.

fangirl:
off the top of my head, liable to be wrong in these early stages, but i think 'crazy beautiful' is a nat song. the music just brings out the literally crazy beautiful vibe of the song.

RhythmicVenus:
Not sure, but just a thought....

C/B has been dedicated to Natalie at many concerts on the acoustic tour. this leads me to believe (for obvious reasons) that it is about the relationship between her and Taylor.

I think it seems rather obvious that the behavior of the girl is well described in the word 'crazy'. The bridge makes the song sound like a break up song, 'If you don't need me, I think I'll go...' this, in turn leads me to believe it is about a relationship that was unsteady (liquid), and over time becomes stronger (driftwood) until eventually everything blows up to the bridge and they come back together stronger than before... the relationship is a push/pull relation on the girls part. She spends her time dragging him in and then pushing him away, eventually the guy has caught on... the chorus describes this.

that's all I have for now, more later (maybe).

zestykat:
Yeah, I've never completely grasped this, haha! It's been dedicated to Natalie at a lot of shows, and 90% of the song is adorable, but that bridge makes it sound like a break up song. Maybe not quite that, just about a relationship unsure of itself. Which is why I don't get why on earth he dedicated it to her lol

Really good points, rhythmicvenus!

freshspringroll:
yeah... i reckon it was written quite a while ago... def. before they got married. (like most of the album songs)

crazy/b sounds like such a happy song to listen to... but the underlying tones seem q sad to me...

fangirl:
the idea of a break up song doesn't sit so well with me... i think the girl in the song makes taylor nervous. picture this: she's crazy (in a positive light, she's exhilerating), and this just enhances her beauty, she is unlike any other girl in the world it seems. And this makes him nervous, because why would she want him (the out-of-work muso)? wouldn't she want someone crazy and beautiful too? so the idea of "if you don't need me, i think i'll go/if you don't want me tell me no" is a kind of, "hey, it's ok if you don't like me, because i know i'm nothing like you." it's just normal dating nerves, especially when you meet someone who is like that.

(now that i have put it in words, i've dated someone who was "crazy beautiful", and it is nerve wracking knowing that no matter how special you know you are, the fact that on their first driving lesson they stole a llama and then shaved their head for the prom when asked too many times "how will you do your hair?" makes you realise you're nothing...)

HEYsara:
i made this hanson scapebook in 1999 and updated thru the years, and i have some of the meanings of the songs. i'm pretty sure these were said by taylor in an interview. not sure which interview, or any of the details..but here goes:

"Save mme is a love song about needing someone so much that you can't live without them and needing them to come back to you and confessing the wrongs you committed to them."

"A song to sing is about a lot of things. one of them being about a person who is so depressed that they are lost in their own depression and talking about they need a song to sing, a friend to borrow"

"Beautiful eyes is a ver sad song. it's about someong loing someone very very special to them. and its actually very litterally about a man losing his wife during child birth and being able to see his wife in his daugthers eyes."