This month marks the 20th anniversary of the release of MMMBop, an album of demos released by Hanson a year before the group’s first studio album, Middle Of Nowhere, became a smash-hit. MMMBop the album is notable for featuring the first appearance of “MMMBop” the song, although that demo version is more of a ballad than the infectious ear-worm that has been tormenting the world since 1997, and now the boys of Hanson (the cute one, the ugly one, and the other ugly one) are honoring this impressive milestone with a lengthy reflection on the legacy of their biggest song.
This comes from Vulture, which got in deep with Hanson on topics like why the band was rejected by so many record labels in its early days, how “MMMBop” has staying power because its lyrics are deeper than you’d expect, and whether or not it’s weird for the guys to see themselves so young in the “MMMBop” video when they’re so old now. However, the most shocking part of the interview is that, apparently, people have been singing “MMMBop” wrong all of these years. The brothers say they’ve never heard a good cover of it because the singers usually “syncopate it wrong” and “can’t sing the chorus right.” In defense of these bad cover singers, though, they’re probably just having a hard time remembering if the next line is “Mmmbop, ba duba dop” or “Ba du bop, ba duba dop.”
The boys are still hopeful that someone will perform it properly someday, noting that the song “probably needs a really good cover.” As for who they’d trust to take on such an important task, one of the brothers suggests Fitz And The Tantrums and another says Bruno Mars would “probably find a way to kill it.” The rest of us will just have to try a little harder if we want to impress the Hansons.