Catchy hit pop song, Mmmbop

We ask artists and performers about how some of their most famous work happened. This week, we talk to Isaac Hanson of American pop rock band Hanson about its infamous earworm.

‘All songs have different kinds of patterns. Some songs you sit down in a room, you start playing together and two, three, four hours later, you’re done and you’re like, ‘holy cow, lightning struck!’ That happens, and it happens relatively frequently, or at least it certainly can. And some songs take a little while to find a place.

‘‘Mmmbop was in the taking-a-littlewhile-to-find-its-place category. The chorus itself – ‘mmmbop, ba duba dop, ba du bop’ – was originally conceived as an attempt on a, quote unquote, catchy background part

"The chorus itself... was originally conceived as a... catchy background part underneath another song." Isaac Hanson

underneath another song. But it was too much of a thing, and too complex, to be in the background.

‘‘We would always come back to it and go ‘That’s a cool thing, that’s a really cool thing, we should write a song over that sometime’.

‘‘One particular afternoon I remember walking into the living room where [middle brother] Taylor was very broodingly looking over his keyboard, humming some stuff.

‘‘I said to him, ‘What’s up?’ and he said, ‘Well, you know that song, I think I might have an idea for the verse, for that mmmbop thing’. And I’m like, ‘OK’. He starts on this progression which is, in large part, the first verse of Mmmbop. And I remember really clearly going, ‘Oh, that works. That’s really cool!‘.

‘‘I remember, that afternoon beginning to work through and finalising what would become Mmmbop. Finalising lyrics, the structure, coming up with ‘in an mmmbop they’re gone, in an mmmbop they’re not there’, then the ‘can you tell me’ section, and the verses.

‘‘[We were] kind of trying to make sense of this kind of nonsensical lyrical chorus, which was just super catchy and something we felt needed a home.

‘‘The song itself is very much rooted in the fact that . . . doing something that’s worth doing is going to be hard. If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.

‘‘In some form or another you’re choosing your livelihood and your musical career and the thing that you love and are passionate about over certain relationships, and having to make that thing.‘‘

As told to Anna Loren.