(#574: 21 June 1997, 1 week)
Track listing: Thinking Of You/MMMBop/Weird/Speechless/Where's The Love/Yearbook/Look At You/Lucy/I Will Come To You/A Minute Without You/Madeline/With You In Your Dreams/Man From Milwaukee
(Author's Note: "Man From Milwaukee" appears on CD editions only)
I can’t improve on the description Rob Sheffield – or, more precisely, his friend Stephanie - gives of Hanson in Love Is A Mix Tape, namely “Tony DeFranco for an Ani DiFranco world,” so I will content myself by saying that “MMMBop” was the smartest junior UK number one single since “Pass The Dutchie.” Unlike future British boy bands whom I could but won't (yet) mention, Hanson did what they said on their self-reliant label; they wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, were their own young men. But “MMMBop” also owes its success to the skilful and gleeful marshalling of its producers’ resources; Stephen Lironi brings the same slightly aggressive edge to its rhythmic ambling as he had done to Black Grape, while mixers the Dust Brothers make the beats and scratches tickle each other, and the group themselves, like the feathers of a purple pillow fight on a hot August morning.
“MMMBop” is also one of the first non-British number
ones to take the Spice Girls on board as a direct philosophical
influence; like “Wannabe,” the song is about the importance of holding
on to proper and permanent relationships from the word go and not
forsaking them for transient overnight stops. If it seems unusual for a boy
band to be singing on their first hit about growing old and losing
one’s hair, then maybe it was overdue for someone to do so – “So hold on
to the ones who really care/In the end they’ll be the only ones there.”
True enough. And there isn’t the need to underline the irony of “you
turn your back and they’re gone so fast” coinciding with “MMMBop” being
(along with Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”) the first pop song
which Sheffield couldn’t share with his late wife, nor to think that the then seven-year-old Taylor Swift would have had that song subliminally in her mind when she came to write and record "22," with its very similar musical structure and lyrical subject matter, fifteen years later.
But
musically “MMMBop” is the antithesis of mournful; Taylor Hanson's
firestorming lead vocal - to a point; his voice was breaking at the time, so the producers had to do a little sneaky varispeeding to make sure that high note stayed hit - makes Michael Jackson seem twenty billion times
more alive than on that blooded dancefloor, while Lironi and the Dust men
make the song sparkle and crack open into the clearest blue in anyone’s
air, also proving that live scratching in 1997 was not a late stage
backwards glance but a very welcome return to NOW. Fantastic, danceable
and charming, without any cynicism, “MMMBop” provided yet further
evidence that bubblegum, let alone New Pop, was still breathing and
vibrantly alive; dancing in its comic book chimes of freedom reminds me
of why bubblegum and free jazz overlap in my mind, expressing as they do
in their own ways exhilaration, liberation and spelling out LIFE in huge, pink capital letters across aquamarine skies of wonder and promise.
And that's just the single. Hanson have been unfairly and inaccurately labelled as one-hit wonders (or even a one-song wonder) and reviews of their third and most successful album - their first on a major; the previous two had come out independently - offered either condescending well-done pat-on-the-head reviews or scathing dismissals of their not being a "proper" junior pop group (whatever that means). Yes, they needed help from the grown-up pros to give their songs - which were entirely, at root, the work of the three teenage Hanson brothers - a leg-up. Sorry to disappoint purists, but that is the history of pop music since forever, and the fact that writers of the calibre of Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Desmond Child and Ellen Shipley were attracted to Hanson's work should stand as a compliment.
Indeed, Desmond Child has said how deeply he empathises with the song "Weird" - a somewhat forlorn ballad powered by the clanking beat of what sounds like the rusting legs of a robot - in that he himself grew up as a gay Latino, hence felt rejected and ostracised. In the context of Middle Of Nowhere it is probably the most thought-provoking and quietly disturbing of these songs, and for what it does works more subtly, and therefore better, than more garlanded things like Radiohead's "Creep," as well as giving a clear pointer to the band's imminent "maturity."
Middle Of Nowhere hasn't been left with a great reputation, which is unfair, because it is an absolutely smashing pop album, the kind that British boy bands of the time seem to have been too scared or reserved to make (although it must surely have been a subsequent influence in respect of McFly, Busted and One Direction). It hooks you straightaway from the rather glorious rush of "Thinking Of You" - the banjo-mimicking piano towards song's end reminds you that the Hansons are from Tulsa, Oklahoma - through wonderful shiny songs such as "Speechless" (written with Lironi's help, which is why it sounds a bit like something Quad90 could do) and the furious, rash-scratching rush of "Where's The Love," as powerful as any "rock" band of the period.
"Look At You" is really quite an astonishing performance; I don't know about a Michael Jackson influence, either at the "ABC" or Blood On The Dance Floor level, but this is paranoid angst straight out of Soundgarden - and Taylor's voice does share many characteristics with that of Eddie Vedder. This is thunderous rock which should shame any adults, "Look At You" ends with ecstatic yapping and shrieking, as if to say, can't we go any further, e.g. over the edge of the world (what do you mean, it's round)?
"Lucy" is a rather sweet Beatles derivé ("Here, There And Everywhere" via Lennon's "Woman") where Zac gets his turn in the vocal spotlight. Of the ballads, "Yearbook," done with Shipley's assistance, is a standard what-became-of-Johnny mystery, and although the song is set at Scooby-Doo mystery levels, Taylor's vocal, especially towards the end, is really hurting - he is bursting to find out what became of the boy, whether or not he's still alive. As with Cliff Richard's "Carrie," it remains a mystery, and the band seem to be in favour of keeping it that way.
Meanwhile, the Mann/Weill hook-up "I Will Come To You" is a terrific hand-waving/candle-lighting singalong ballad, and you do realise that this record, as a whole, is what we so desperately wanted Gary Barlow to come up with - some adventure, some humour and above all some actual "anthems" (but we'll have to wait for young Robbie - he played the long game with his first album and it took its time to reach the top, but get there it eventually did; see entry #586 - before we reach any of those qualities here). This was the big post-Take That comeback many had been anticipating - but disappointed Barlow followers opted to follow angels instead. Splendid pop and it should have given Hanson a second number one single.
Otherwise it's terrific power pop all the way concerning matters teenage; there's something very endearing about "A Minute Without You"'s reliance on that quaint pre-internet contraption, the telephone. "Madeline" is also tremendously catchy, and "With You In Your Dreams" is a very moving elegy to the boys' late grandmother, all the more affecting because they sing and perform it with honest emotion but steer clear of cloying sentimentality. We will all carry on.
That is how most versions of the album end, but the CD leaps through a few blank phantom tracks before alighting upon "Man From Milwaukee," straight-up thrashy guitar indie worthy of Hanson's earlier days (an embryonic demo of "MMMBop," done at about three-quarters of the hit version's speed, is moderately intriguing but primarily of historical interest) with its references to yellow walkie-talkies and cut-ups of garbled speech - "this is like Beck for juniors!" we agreed (and with the Dust Brothers co-producing and David Campbell providing string arrangements here and there, we'd be absolutely right!).
Overall Middle Of Nowhere is a really terrific pop album - if it had been the Fountains Of Wayne or Weezer you'd all be calling it a classic - full of the vim and vigour pitifully absent from most of its British late nineties equivalents (at least the male ones - the Spice Girls were about to encounter some competition). And although Hanson have never rescaled those commercial heights, they have kept going and remain active with an utterly loyal following. Good for them. Oh, and Zac played the drums and Isaac the guitar. And they still do.
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