{"id":2812,"date":"2013-09-13T16:14:21","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T15:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmmboptastic.com\/site\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2013-09-13T16:14:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T15:14:21","slug":"lets-talk-about-the-greatness-of-hanson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mmmboptastic.com\/site\/2013\/09\/13\/lets-talk-about-the-greatness-of-hanson\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk About the Greatness of Hanson"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 9, 2013<\/p>\n

by Katie Bain<\/p>\n

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Cover art from the 1997 “Mmmbop” single<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/em>In 1997, my little sister got Hanson’s Middle of Nowhere<\/em> as a birthday gift. I teased her. My judgment was mostly based on “Mmmbop,” the mega-massive catchy as heck hit song and the lead single off the album. “Mmmbop” was dominating the pop music station in our town of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and like, everywhere else in the world. I, however, was 13<\/em> and thinking myself pretty cool because I had just discovered Sublime. And so, I brushed the song off as kid stuff.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I was being an jerk. Hanson was exactly what seven year old girls like my sister should have been listening to. Compared to a current pop landscape where Miley Cyrus humping a foam finger is acceptable entertainment for children, Hanson was genuine, sweet, sincere and completely crushable without being blatantly sexual. Also, “Mmmbop” was legitimately great — a joyous and goofy pop rock adolescent treatise on the topic of impermanence. (No seriously.) The song was produced by the Dust Brothers, after all, though I didn’t know who the Dust Brothers were at the time, because in truth I was not actually cool at all.<\/p>\n

During that period I was spending a lot of time hanging out in my bedroom. It was there, as I sat playing with my pogs or whatever, that I would pick up on the strains of Middle of Nowhere<\/em> coming through the stereo in our family room. It made me feel things.<\/p>\n

Middle of Nowhere<\/em> was the third studio LP by Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson, three brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma who were 16, 13 and 11 years old when the album was released. But Hanson wasn’t some industry gimmick indie-fied boy band. These guys were (and are) legitimately talented, each playing their own instruments: Zac on drums, Isaac on guitar and Taylor on keyboards and lead vocals. While I had been taking piano lessons for five years and could barely bang out “Hot Crossed Buns,” these guys were going platinum and killing it on Saturday Night Live<\/em>. (During their December 13, 1997 appearance they also appeared in a skit with Will Ferrell and host Helen Hunt that made fun of the fact that “Mmmbop” had been played on the radio “7.8 million times” that spring and summer.)<\/p>\n