The question I get asked most often is why? Why do I like Hanson? Why do I buy into it, this obviously pre-fabricated, girly looking brother act that can't really play their instruments. You would think that a smart person like me, a journalism major, and a cynical one at that, would see right through it.

And then I just fumble around for the answer and inevitably leave the person with some weak variation of "I just do." Of course, it's far more complicated than that, but the kind of people who ask aren't usually the kind of people who want an answer. In order to find the real answer, you need look no farther than your CD rack. It starts there, in the words of those songs.

Mmmbop. Not a complicated concept by any means. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of analysis get what's trying to be said. Love the folks are around you while you can. Simple notions must inevitably equal simple writers, right? I think most of America feels that way, and that's why they hate Hanson. Welcome to our culture, a place that's grown indifferent toward simple notions like love and family. It's cynicism to the point where everything is a punchline. We've become a divided people of inside jokes, elitism and an obsession with being apathetic, hip and aloof. We know that we're not people any more. We're nothing more than buying power and statistics. Why do I like Hanson? Hanson is not any of those things. Here they are, these kids. Look at them as they kick around that L word so easily, as if everyone were entitled to it. Imagine the nerve of them.

A daisy or a rose. Think of that line, the very wonder in it. They aren't wondering about the how of it, they're wondering about the why. Who, in this day and age, has the courage to say things like that out loud? In a time where we have the ability to communicate with anyone on the planet in a matter of seconds, where we can create new human beings from a bundle of extraneous cells, we're tired of questions that have no concrete answers. We're tired of the why.

Hanson is all about the why. At the very core of their music is the reality of their existence. They're young. They're confused. They're hurt. They're happy. They're discovering what the world is made of, and they're taking us along for the ride. It hits at the vulnerable core that lies beneath all of that American cynicism. In the end, we're all the same. We all love and laugh and cry just like everyone else, as opposed as we are to showing it. With Hanson, there is no pretense, no self-awareness, no shame about showing emotion.

I admit it. I'm one of the dreaded cynics. Hanson may not say what's in my head. They may not be totally reflective of my decidedly hard-edged opinions and fatalistic view of the world. What they do say, however, is what's in my heart. Somewhere, I saw myself in that music, in the simple, unwavering hope that love is possible, that a few families do stay together, that a smile can make the world right.

Why do I love Hanson? I love Hanson because they have the courage to feel in a world that writes off emotion as weakness, because they don't attempt to be anything other than what they are, which is young and confused, but trying anyway. And the haters? They'll never understand. Their prophecy is a self-fulfilling one. The cynicism that keeps them from listening to Middle of Nowhere will also keep them from the elusive breath of fresh air they so relentlessly seek.