There's always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic '60's and '70's rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we're sort of the anatomy of a '70's rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the '50's and '60's.
Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.
I love singing. It makes me feel good. It's like a release, especially when I'm singing soul music.
Soul music is about longevity and reaching and touching people on a human level - and that's never going to get lost.
I am in love with old school funk and soul music. That's what I grew up listening to, and I want to bring that style back with my music. I love artists like Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and more!
People keep putting limitations on themselves and creating this reality that soul music is dead. That's only in their reality. It's not true. To me, Adele is R&B. Bruno Mars is R&B. It's just good songwriting and songs. That is going to last.
I started to write a lot of ballads that were sultry and had a Norah Jones-for-country kind of feel. I wanted to bring elements of old soul music and old country music.
I grew up on soul music. I was a dancing little creep.
I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It's music I'd want to sample if I were a rapper.
I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.