LOS ANGELES, March 26 — If you didn’t feel old already, you’re about to.
It might seem like only yesterday when you were singing along to MMMBop by Hanson, so we’re sorry to have to break the news to you, but the infectious, earworm of a track turned 20 this week.
Brothers Zac, Taylor and Isaac Hanson took a walk down memory lane with Vulture and revealed that despite being covered by numerous musicians, no one has been able to sing its iconic chorus correctly.
“You know why? People can’t sing the chorus right,” Isaac, now 35, explained. “Most of the time they syncopate it wrong.”
The term “syncopate” for our non-musically trained readers, refers to “the displacement of beats or accents in music or a rhythm so that strong beats become weak, and vice versa,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
During their interview with Vulture, the guys also revealed something shocking about the tune: The lyrics have a dark side.
Here’s a sampling to jog your memory:
“You have so many relationships in this life/ only one or two will last/ you go through all the pain and strife/ then you turn your back and they’re gone so fast”
“So hold on the ones who really care/ in the end they’ll be the only ones there/ and when you get old and start losing your hair/ can you tell me who will still care?”
“I think a lot of people did not [realise the song’s underlying tone]. And that makes sense,” Taylor was quoted as saying about MMMBop’s hidden message.
“But hopefully over time, the staying power of that song is about the fact that it’s more than it looks like at first glance. That hook is what gets you in, but what’s below that is what keeps you there.”
