RVA Playlist

My Darling Fury created a beautiful cover to 90s teen sensation Hanson’s “MMMBop.” However, Hanson fans are not happy.

The indie-pop group posted the cover to their Facebook page and soon got angry comments from “Fansons” who were obviously not fans of MDF’s version.

I’ve actually dealt with a Hanson superfan myself a while back. It’s entertaining to see how crazy obsessed they are.

A few of my favorite complaints:

• I would like this if, in Taylor Hanson’s words, the chorus was sung correctly. Mmmbop, ba duba dop, Ba du bop, ba duba dop, Ba du bop, ba duba dop, Ba du
• As a person who has been a Hanson fan for more than half my life, I appreciate your effort; however, you’re not singing the chorus quite right.
• Ugh. It’s eerie. The song is supposed to be fun <_<‘
• What is this! Hanson is bae, and whatever image that is will give me nightmares forever. #fanson

I actually enjoy this version and hope My Darling Fury plays it at every show – even if they get the “ba duba dop” part wrong.

The Guardian

A great article about Little Richard – full text at the source – with a Hanson mention.

Hanson’s still marvellous and silly MMMBop.

That last example is also a prime case in which a piece of verbal nonsense becomes a record’s chorus and biggest hook (can you even remember the verses of MMMBop?). If the only purpose of a hook is to get a record into your head, why bother with spending time on actual words? The vocals are no more than a delivery mechanism for the melody – for the na-na-na of Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head or the da-ba-dee-da-ba-daa of Eiffel 65’s Blue. Or, best of all, the Crystals’ wondrous Da Doo Ron Ron. That doesn’t make them brainless. If anything, these are some of the cleverest uses of vocal sounds – one hesitates to call them lyrics – in pop: once heard, never forgotten. And in the case of the Crystals and similar records from the 50s and 60s, the nonsense served the purpose of making the real meaning clear without spelling it out and getting the record pulled from the airwaves: “And when he walked me home … Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ron.” I don’t think Dolores Brooks meant she was going to say, “Thanks very much, but I’ve got to be up early tomorrow. Maybe see you next week.”

 

Newsday

John Popper and Blues Traveler are performing on Wednesday at Irving Plaza. Photo Credit: Getty Images/Rick Diamond

John Popper is never short on collaborators. The enthusiastic Blues Traveler front man helped celebrate the band’s 20th anniversary of their breakthrough album “Four” by producing a new record with some of rock’s most prolific songwriters and performers in the biz today.

Popper was eager to break down “Blow Up The Moon” with amNewYork in advance of their upcoming gig at Irving Plaza.

If I haven’t picked up a Blues Traveler record in a while, what should I expect on “Blow Up The Moon?”

One thing you can expect is that it’s going to sound very unlike any of the other albums we’ve ever done. That’s because we collaborated with very different artists than ourselves. We have 3OH!3 in an electronic combination with us, a ska/hip-hop thing with Rome from Sublime, we’ve got a country thing with Thompson Square and we’ve got Hanson which is kind of their own category. There are songs with Jewel, Bowling for Soup — and that was really fun. When you put yourself against somebody so different from you, you really get to see the contrast.

You mentioned all the bands had great contrast to Blues Traveler. Was there any collaboration that felt similar to you in style?

Plain White T’s. We wrote this really great song called “Nikkia’s Prom” and I always wanted to work with them. I think they were the most like us, but also so different.

Whose idea was this to bring in all these different artists to collaborate with?

I’ve got to give credit to our manager. It was around the 20th anniversary of our “Four” record and she had the sense for which bands would contrast us best. We were working with new songwriters at the time and she took it to that step above to, “Why don’t you collaborate with performers as well?”

Was there a learning curve to working with these artists?

There absolutely is a learning curve, and that’s part of the process to writing. It usually starts out with, “How do we do this?” But the thing is, is that most people we worked with were great songwriters themselves so they didn’t really need my prodding. I got really used to listening after a while because everyone had their own ideas and they were just flying through the air.