The backwoods metalhead haircuts. The lead singer whose voice has yet to change. The plague-like catchiness of the melody. A white Jackson 5 that dresses like the Australian grungies Silverchair. It's Hanson, and their hit "MMMBop" has firmly established itself as the latest Catchy Overplayed Song. They're the next, big, irritating thing in pop music.

I first heard it on Friday night, when the video played on VH-1. Ten minutes later, it ran on MTV. The next day at 3 it was playing on the radio when I got in the car. "MMMBop" had gone from novel diversion to over-exposed nightmare in just 19 hours.

Three times in 19 hours. I knew that at that rate it would easily take over all radio stations in just a few days. We will all be subjected to "MMMBop" for months as it wanders down the food chain of radio formats for one-hit wonders. First: the so-called "alternative" stations will play them. Then, the top 40 shows on Sunday morning. Next, the "lite mix" music program (less talk, no rap, no metal). Finally, it will assume its final place in pop history as a tired reference in Jay Leno's monologue.

Do radio station managers know how painful the Catchy Overplayed Song is to its public? We call them "sugary" for good reason. At first taste, they're pleasing. But when poured down our throats in large amounts, they burn like battery acid. Every nerve ending screams "Danger!" until we would scratch out our own eyeballs to make the awful sound stop.

So it is with Hanson. 

To illustrate how quickly "overplaying" escalates, we have created the "MMMBop" meter, which estimates how many times we will have each heard the song as of this moment. The meter bases its estimation on my experience: three times for every 19 hours since 8 p.m. on Friday, May 2, 1997. Our only hope is that enough radio station program managers and MTV executives see this page, they will understand the pain they are delivering to us, and Hanson will disappear from the charts. Only then will this meter have accomplished its mission.

If only we thought of this in time to stop the Spice Girls.

(c)Spite Magazine, 1997
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