29 Years Ago, a Pop Hit Hid a Dark Meaning Behind Its Sunny Chorus

Summer, youth, yellow, scat singing - these intertwined ingredients for Hanson's MMMBop, now hailed as one of the greatest songs of all time by Rolling Stone and Spin, seem like happiness personified.

The three blonde, shaggy-haired adolescent brothers, Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson, respectively aged just 17, 14, and 11 at the time of their chart-topping 1997 hit, offered a sun-drenched song detailing friendship and fun - or at least, it seemed to on a surface level.

Written entirely by the Hansons, the pop track was originally a slower, guitar-focused record on their 1996 demo album, also named MMMBop. The sound (which you can check out here) was arguably closer to Nirvana than the Jackson Five-influenced sound that listeners came to know and love, thanks to producers the Dust Brothers, who decided to turn up the feel-good factor.

What gets lost in the new edition, for many listeners, however, was a sort of lyrical existential cry for help, such as: "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," something that was later confirmed by Zac in retrospective interviews as an adult.

"What that song talks about is, you've got to hold on to the things that really matter. MMMBop represents a frame of time or the futility of life," Zac told SongFacts in 2004 (documented by Bustle). "Things are going to be gone, whether it's your age and your youth, or maybe the money you have, or whatever it is, and all that's going to be left are the people you've nurtured and have really built to be your backbone and your support system."

"In an mmmbop they're gone," the Hanson brothers sang of their fading friendships and adolescence.

In the same interview, Zac cited The Beach Boys as an influence on the track. "The first music that we got into was '50s and '60s music," he explained (via American Songwriter). With this connection in mind, the song bears a striking similarity to Brian Wilson's work on the Pet Sounds album in particular - upbeat and rooted in traditional music, but with great focus on loneliness, existentialism, and even death.

However, like Wilson's work, it's not all doom and gloom from the Hanson classic. The brothers ask, "When you get old and start losing your hair/Can you tell me who will still care?" and later answer their own question with a sense of measured optimism: "Plant a seed, plant a flower, plant a rose/You can plant any one of those/Keep planting to find out which one grows."

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Jun 4, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 5:25 PM.