The Best No 1 Records: Hanson – MMMBop

The best No 1 records: Hanson – MMMBop

31 May 2012

1997: Hanson will probably spend the rest of their lives trying and failing to come up with a song that emulates the genius of MMMBop, and there’s no shame in that.

Rolling Stone readers voted MMMBop the sixth worst song of the 90s, but such arrant rockist snobbery need detain us no further. MMMBop would have been a brilliant song, even before producers The Dust Brothers set about sprinkling magic wikki-wikki pop dust all over it. It’s also a song whose wisdom is inversely proportionate to the age (16, 13, 11) of the three brothers that wrote it. As young Zac Hanson later explained, the lyric was about eschewing the paraphernalia of fame and fortune in favour of “the things that really matter [in life]”. Once the single shot to No 1, Hanson did well to heed its advice. Still very much together, the brothers will probably spend the rest of their lives trying and failing to come up with a song that emulates the genius of MMMBop, and there’s no shame in that. Happily, Hanson wear their albatross lightly. In 2011, they announced they would be launching an India Pale Ale beer called MMMHop.