Hanson "Mmm Bop"

I spent 6 years in radio---my first 6 years in radio---at a station that played Top 40.

And yes, a lot of what hits the Top 40 is inane drivel. Pap. Garbage.

Silly Pop songs that don't have the gravitas of a Fluffernutter sandwich.

But not "Mmm Bop."

Sure, when I first heard this song, I was ready to dismiss it. The chorus is ridiculously catchy, yet requires no knowledge of a spoken language. I saw that it was performed by young boys so precocious they practically qualified as Muppets. And the Request Line phone calls from hyperventilating teenage girls . . . Oy!

But then I heard an interview with one of the Muppets who explained that an "Mmm Bop" was a split-second. That in the larger picture, our time on Earth is nothing but a blip, and then it's gone. Gone in an Mmm Bop.

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, "Mmm Bop" is about death.

"Mmm Bop" is about the temporal nature of our corporal being. It asks the existential question of "Who will still care?" when you look up one day and you have become old and irrelevant.

So next time you hear this song and you start to mock it as a sugary trifle, know that the song, and the universe, are paying your disdain no mind, as you will be gone and forgotten in an Mmm Bop.

Hanson, introduced by Kelsey Grammer. How 1998!