Date: May 24, 1997
Weeks: 3
Much like "Sugar, Sugar" (#219), a song with the title "MMMBop" could only be the most sugary, empty-calorie, for-teenagers-by-teenagers pop song you could imagine. And yet. While it's fairly successful on that level, there's something more to this one.
The thing this song brings to the table is sincerity, which is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The lyrics are about how painfully brief people's relationships can be, and how it's impossible to predict which relationships will last, and that it's important to hold on to the people who really care about you because those are the relationships that will last. The notion of familial love over romantic love is an usual one for teenagers to sing songs about. And yet that's exactly why the song is so odd. Because it winds up feeling like you're listening to an 11-year-old lecturing you about things he doesn't completely understand yet. Meanwhile, the chorus is "MmmBop. Ba daba doo-wop."
The lead vocals are also painfully sincere. It's a 14-year-old, whose voice is still in the middle of changing, trying to sing as intensely as he can, in as high a pitch as he can still manage. Strained doesn't begin to describe it. This strained sound also makes the lyrics difficult to comprehend. However, you can't deny his enthusiasm, and that's where the vocals are redeemed. He's going for it, and he doesn't care.
Musically, you can't beat the overall tone. The lead and bass guitars are particularly nice all throughout. This is just a fun song. It's been filled with some really dated production hooks, though. Oh, the record scratches. What a terrible fit for this song. That was just the sort of thing that got added to songs in the 90s because that's what music producers figured "the kids" liked. I also don't really care for the breakdown in the bridge.
It turns out this is the version that was deliberately punched up a bit for the radio. There was an earlier version of the song that was a little more natural. I agree that version needs some punching-up, and a lot of the choices that were made were the right ones. But they overdid it a bit.
My verdict: Like it. It's fun, it tries to be deep, and there's no faulting their enthusiasm. I'm pleased that Hanson seems to have grown up and honed their craft.
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