13 June 1997
If I told you a number one single was an original track speeded up and given cartoonish record scratches, all with a chorus of gibberish scat vocalising and sung by three cutesy floppy-haired American siblings, you’d assume it was a novelty hit, right? Hanson’s ‘MMMBop’ is that single. I see a lot of revisionist takes online about how it’s *actually* a pure pop masterpiece and the like. No, it’s not. It’s a novelty hit.
Even without all the added gimmickry by Hanson’s unlikely collaborators the Dust Brothers, ‘MMMBop’ is pretty unconvincing fare. They skim quickly and almost unintelligibly over the verse lyrics, and no wonder: they’re about as qualified to deliver observations like “You have so many relationships in this life / Only one or two will last” as they are to drink beer or watch 15-rated movies. The chorus is run into the ground. The music is polished-up US guitar jangling with a soupçon of shredded chords because the kids have long hair and therefore ‘grunge’. Maybe the Hansons’ sunny, toothy, roller-blading Americanness was still exotica to us in 1997, or perhaps it landed for the tween boyband demographic. Otherwise, who bought this, and why? Novelty hit.
Irish Number Ones 