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Hanson’s “MMMBop” might have been the soundtrack to the cheesy pop-fuelled Nineties, but the brothers have just crushed our dreams by revealing that actually, their smash hit is pretty damn depressing.
Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson have been busy celebrating the song’s 20th anniversary (yes, that’s two whole decades) and discussing what made it such a timeless classic.
“It’s not exactly sunshine and rainbows but it’s packaged in a way that it’s looking for the moral to the story,” Taylor, who is now 33 (again, what?!), told Vulture. “Hopefully over time, the staying power of that song is about the fact that it’s more than it looks like at first glance. That hook is what gets you in but what’s below that is what keeps you there.”
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The“MMMBop” lyrics hints at a darker meaning, with the song focusing on how only “one or two” relationships last the test of time compared to the many friends who will abandon you when the going gets tough. “In an mmmbop they’re gone/ Oh yeah oh/ In an mmmbop they’re gone”. Sob.
Youngest sibling Zac added that the original version of “MMMBop” was slower and only reached the upbeat tempo towards the end, while Isaac joked that the band write “happy sad songs”, with their influence probably coming from “listening to a lot of old R&B and rock and roll”.
Nowadays, the lads enjoying family life and working on their own pale ale brand, MMMHops.
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