The story about Hanson's way to succes starts in 1989. That year the Hanson family moved from Tulsa to live in Ecuador, Trinidad and Venezuela for a year. Walker and Diana (their mum and dad) had bought a tape collection covering the years 1957-1969 from TV-shop to Tay, Zac and Ike becouse there was now English radio in South America. On the tapes there were songs like Johnny B. Good, Splish Splash, Rockin' Robin, Sommertime Blues and Good Golly Miss Molly.
They listened to it the whole time when they lived in South America. They moved to South America because of Walkers job as an international finance for a drilling company (he has quit the job now because he wants to travel with his sons). Walker's job all so took the family to live in Washington, D.C. Ike wrote his first song when he was 8 and they lived in Ecuador, he wrote the music to it with the chords C, F and G on an electric keyboard. The name of the song is Rain falling down and it is on the album Boomerang. Walker and Diana learned Tay, Zac and Isaac to sing amen in steams at the dinner table. After that they started sing a cappella. This was 1992 and Ike was 11, Tay was 9 and Zac was 6. The name of the group was "The Hanson Brothers". 1993 they changed it to "Hanson" because some people thought the name was "The Handsome Brothers". Their first concert was on the "mayfest" in Tulsa 1992 and the first song they sang in a concert was "The Lougest Time" by Billy Joel. They performed at parties, corporate functions, festivals, amusement parks and sporting events. They took piano lessons for Donald Ryan and dance lessons for Ja'Marc Davis. In March 1994 Hanson was at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. There they met Christopher Sabec (there manager). They sang River for him and danced for him and he liked it. A year later they hired him as their manager. In the fall of 1994 they did their first independent album, "Boomerang". It was recorded in Nashville and Chicago. After about three years (from the start 1992) they got a guitar and a drum kit. They already had a keyboard. Zac found his first drums in a friend's attic and Ike bought his first guitar in a pawnshop. Ike had to play the guitar because he was the only one that had arms that was long enough. Their second independent album, Mmm Bop was recorded in late 1995 at Louis Drapp Studio and Natura studio in Tulsa. It was mixed at Sound of Music in Rishmond, Virginia. Christopher Sabec had sent a demo from Mmm Bop to Mercury Records. They liked it, but they thought it was a fake. So Christopher invited Steve Greenberg (senior vice president at Mercury) to Coffeyville, Kansas in April 1996 where Hanson had a concert. He really liked it and within a month Hanson had signed whit Mercury Records. Before that 14 record labels didn't sign.
In May 1997 they released there third album "Middle of Nowhere". When they wrote and recorded it they lived in a rented house in Los Angeles for a period of five months, from June to November 1996. They submitted more then 36 songs fore the album and worked whit a lot of famous songwriters. The album was recorded in five different studios. Middle of Nowhere was Hanson's first album with Mercury Records. The first single from it was Mmm Bop, whish came out in March 1997. It became a huge hit all over the world and it hit the number one spot on charts in over twenty countries. Whit Mmm bop Hanson made their breakthrough. Only 11, 14 and 16 years old they became idols for millions of peopel and got to travel all over the world.