No Rock And Roll Fun

HERE ARE THE NOT-SO-YOUNG MEN: Hanson are back. Actually, they sort of want us to think they've never been away. They also want us to think the new album is being released on an indie label through choice - "everyone will think, ooh, Hanson were dropped. But really, it was just time for a new phase to kick in. We reached a point where we really needed to go for it ourselves." Clear? I mean, obviously the being dropped by Island would have helped there, but it luckily coincided with a new phase. It's rather like the way the job steam-cleaning the seats of Silverlink commuter trains will be a new phase kicking in for the members of One True Voice in the next few weeks, we suppose.

"My girlfriend is in college, and she has to figure out what she wants to do with her life," says Zac. "I have friends my age and I go, 'I have lived three times as much life as you have.' Not in a mean way - I'm not putting down my peers. This is a burden, yes, but what more would I want to do than be burdened by something I love?"

We'd guess: being incredibly rich and successful and getting blow jobs off Angelina Jolie, Zac. And don't be too sure that you're not putting down your peers - yeah, they might not have been interviewed by Noel Edmonds or got up at four to do breakfast telly, but living day-to-day is still living, even if you don't have a PA organising your days for you. And maybe, if you'd have been living lives like them, you wouldn't have struggled so much to find an audience after your initial success - you might have had something to say.

Is it more scary that their first album Middle of Nowhere sold 6.5 million copies, or that the second could only manage just over 200,000?