MMMBop – Hanson
“MMMBop” sounds like pure 90s pop.
Catchy, upbeat, a little chaotic, and very easy to not take seriously.
“MMMBop” was written by brothers Isaac, then 16, Taylor, 14, and Zac Hanson, who was just 12 years old at the time.
Which makes what they were writing about a little more surprising.
In a 2004 interview, Zac Hanson explained the meaning behind the song:
That’s an interesting one. That song started out really as the background part for another song. We were making our first independent album and we were trying to come up with a background part. We started singing a slightly different incarnation of what is now the chorus of “MMMbop.” That sort of stuck in our heads and never really worked as a background part, and over a couple of years, that piece really has stuck in our heads and we really crafted the rest of the song – the verses and bridge and so on.
What that song talks about is, you’ve got to hold on to the things that really matter. MMMbop represents a frame of time or the futility of life. Things are going to be gone, whether it’s your age and your youth, or maybe the money you have, or whatever it is, and all that’s going to be left are the people you’ve nurtured and have really built to be your backbone and your support system.
Songfacts.com.
“In an mmmbop they’re gone.”
Now it hits different
It still sounds bright.
It still feels like a song you don’t think twice about.
But once you hear it that way, it shifts.
It’s not just catchy.
It’s about how quickly everything can disappear.
This is an Open Thread
