The Times Tribune

Rock band Hanson last performed at the New York State Fairís Chevy Court on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018. (Katrina Tulloch) Katrina Tulloch

SCRANTON – The Grammy-nominated bands Hanson and Tonic will perform free on Lackawanna County Courthouse Square during FIFA Fan Zone events there next month.

Officials announced those and other musical acts, as well as other fan zone activities, during a press conference Tuesday.

Scranton is hosting one of just three official Pennsylvania World Cup Fan Zones, with activities taking place on Courthouse Square July 4, 5, 18 and 19.

World Cup matches will be broadcast live on a massive outdoor screen on the North Washington Avenue side of the square. Smaller screens, including at least one airing the Spanish broadcast of the matches, will be placed on each corner of the square.

The event will also feature a beer garden, soccer simulator, inflatables, food trucks and more.

Hanson will perform July 18. Tonic will perform July 19.

Other musical acts added to the lineup include Cruel Summer, a live tribute offering the music of Taylor Swift, performing on July 4th at 1:00 PM. On Sunday, July 5th, Eco Del Sur will welcome soccer fans with music from across Latin America. In between the two knockout matches on the main screen, The Wankers will offer a Britpop tribute featuring 90s and modern hits from bands like Coldplay, Blur, and Radiohead.

According to a news release:

Over their 34-year history, brothers Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson have made a significant mark in music. Starting in 1992, they spent their first five years building a fanbase as an independent band in Tulsa, OK. After signing a record deal, they saw a meteoric rise with the 1997 international smash single “MMMBop” from their debut album Middle Of Nowhere, followed by consecutive top 40 singles. A long line of hits, five more studio albums, multiple Grammy nominations, and over 16 million album sales followed. Over the subsequent decades, the band charted their own course, running an independent label while maintaining a coveted connection with their global fan base.

The story of Tonic revolves around the longstanding, close brotherhood shared among members Emerson Hart (vocals, guitar), Jeff Russo (lead guitar), and Dan Lavery (bass). Since 1996, the Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum trio has consistently delivered anthemic rock fashioned from eloquent songcraft, lyrical honesty, and unshakable melodies. Along the way, they translated true experiences and real memories into a storied catalog that resounds just as loudly today. To date, the band has landed six Top 10 singles, sold over 4 million records, and garnered a pair of Grammy nominations. Emerson and Jeff originally linked up in Los Angeles in 1994, with Dan joining the group in 1996. Their full-length debut, Lemon Parade, went platinum and yielded the #1 most- played rock song of 1997, “If You Could Only See.”

Mens Journal

NETHERLANDS – JANUARY 01: Photo of HANSON (Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns)

The 1997 song topped the charts in over 17 countries, but few registered the existential crisis in its lyrics.

Key Points

• Hanson’s “MMMBop” blends upbeat pop with deeper themes of fleeting relationships and youth.
• Zac Hanson explained, “MMMBop represents a frame of time or the futility of life.”
• The song’s optimistic message encourages cherishing meaningful connections despite inevitable change.

Summer, youth, yellow, scat singing — these intertwined ingredients for Hanson’s MMMBop, now hailed as one of the greatest songs of all time by Rolling Stone and Spin, seem like happiness personified.

The three blonde, shaggy-haired adolescent brothers, Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson, respectively aged just 17, 14, and 11 at the time of their chart-topping 1997 hit, offered a sun-drenched song detailing friendship and fun — or at least, it seemed to on a surface level.

Written entirely by the Hansons, the pop track was originally a slower, guitar-focused record on their 1996 demo album, also named MMMBop. The sound (which you can check out here) was arguably closer to Nirvana than the Jackson Five-influenced sound that listeners came to know and love, thanks to producers the Dust Brothers, who decided to turn up the feel-good factor.

What gets lost in the new edition, for many listeners, however, was a sort of lyrical existential cry for help, such as: “You have so many relationships in this life/Only one or two will last
You go through all the pain and strife/Then you turn your back/and they’re gone so fast,” something that was later confirmed by Zac in retrospective interviews as an adult.

“What that song talks about is, you’ve got to hold on to the things that really matter. MMMBop represents a frame of time or the futility of life,” Zac told SongFacts in 2004 (documented by Bustle). “Things are going to be gone, whether it’s your age and your youth, or maybe the money you have, or whatever it is, and all that’s going to be left are the people you’ve nurtured and have really built to be your backbone and your support system.”

“In an mmmbop they’re gone,” the Hanson brothers sang of their fading friendships and adolescence.

In the same interview, Zac cited The Beach Boys as an influence on the track. “The first music that we got into was ’50s and ’60s music,” he explained (via American Songwriter). With this connection in mind, the song bears a striking similarity to Brian Wilson’s work on the Pet Sounds album in particular — upbeat and rooted in traditional music, but with great focus on loneliness, existentialism, and even death.

However, like Wilson’s work, it’s not all doom and gloom from the Hanson classic. The brothers ask, “When you get old and start losing your hair/Can you tell me who will still care?” and later answer their own question with a sense of measured optimism: “Plant a seed, plant a flower, plant a rose/You can plant any one of those/Keep planting to find out which one grows.“

Parade

It’s been 29 years since Hanson’s “MMMBop” blared through our radio speakers for the first time, but it feels like it was just yesterday.

In 1997, three brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Isaac Hanson, Taylor Hanson, and Zac Hanson, also known as the pop-rock band Hanson, broke through in a massive way with their major label debut album, Middle of Nowhere.

The May 6 release quickly shot to No. 1 in several countries like the UK, Australia and Germany, though it peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, blocked from reaching the top spot by pop superstars, the Spice Girls.

Still, it turned the trio into global pop-rock sensations almost overnight.

At the center of the album’s success was the lead single, “MMMBop,” a catchy earworm with an infectious chorus that became one of the defining pop hits of the late 1990s, and remains a nostalgic bop all these years later.

Issac, now 45, previously told The Guardian that they listened to a lot of rock and roll growing up, along with a “lot of doo-wop,” which influenced the chorus.

“We recorded it in a one-car garage, put it on an independent album and sold several thousand copies at local gigs,” he said.

While the original version was “slower and more brooding,” it was rejected by all record companies before Mercury turned it into a smash hit.

The rest is history.

In a landscape dominated by teen boy bands, “MMMBop” stormed the charts, with the breakout smash hit peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and staying there for three weeks, while reaching the Top 10 in many countries across Europe.

The song’s success was powered largely by radio plays, though it was heavily in rotation on MTV as well.

The album sold over 10 million copies worldwide and earned three Grammy nominations. And while “MMMBop” remains a large part of the success, the additional five singles were also well received, including “Where’s the Love,” “Weird,” “Thinking of You” and “I Will Come to You.”

The Governor at the time, Frank Keating, even declared May 6 as “Hanson Day” in Tulsa to commemorate the major release of the three brothers whose melodies reached audiences all across the world.

To this day, Hanson’s fanbase remains strong and dedicated, with Middle of Nowhere remembered as one of the biggest debut albums of the era, with “MMMBop” their signature and most recognizable hit.

A quick listen to the single’s youthful pop-rock melody will instantly transport you to 1997, as the band was on the cusp of their teen global domination.

American Songwriter

Lyrics are more about how they make you feel than what they really say. Of course, poetic lyricists are celebrated for their command of language, but complexity doesn’t always equal a great song. The three hits below are testaments to that fact. The choruses of these songs are really just nonsense, in the best way possible. They mean very little but had a massive impact on listeners when they were released.

“MMMBop” — Hanson

“Bubblegum pop” is a great offender of nonsense lyrics. Many songs that match this descriptor are more about exciting audiences than making them think deeply. That fact is showcased in the chorus of Hanson‘s “MMMBop”: Mmmbop, ba duba dop ba / Du bop, ba duba dop ba.”

Though the chorus is a little light, the verses add a bit of grit to this pop classic. The trio sings about the fleeting, precious nature of life throughout most of this song. They lighten that emotional load with a scatting chorus that feels like little more than nonsense.

MSN

Hanson’s success was unexpected yet they managed to turn one of their late ’90s songs into a teenage anthem that still resonates in the minds of millions of millennials to this day.

The Hanson brothers became huge stars in 1997 with “Mmmbop”. At the time, Isaac, Taylor, and Zachary were 17, 14, and 12, respectively. Their lives changed over night that year.

With one of the most famous songs of the 20th century, the Hansons were nominated for three Grammys in 1998, reached number 1 in 27 countries including the USA and their debut album “Middle of Nowhere” sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

Nothing happens by accident. Steve Greenberg, an executive at Mercury Records, discovered the original version of “Mmmbop” by accident and saw the song’s potential. Before that they had been rejected by 13 labels.

It was the summer of 1996 when the entire Hanson family (seven siblings and their parents) relocated from their hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma to Los Angeles to record their first album. They had to take on the gods of the moment like the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC – not an easy task!

Mercury Records invested a lot in the promotion and the three young talents threw themselves into it. Interviews, big concerts, concerts in remote villages, photo shoots, book signings…

The machinery was there, but Hanson’s motto was to make it clear that they were authentic. “We wrote all our songs ourselves and played all the instruments ourselves. We’re not a ready-made band,” Isaac told the Los Angeles Times in 1997.

The teen magazines of the time helped Hanson’s popularity to reach unimagined heights. Every fan had a favourite, but oddly it was Taylor and Zachary who drew the most attention as Isaac was deemed too old at just 17!

But the Hanson phenomenon didn’t last long. More specifically, as long as it took them to release their second album “This Time Around”. The success did not materialize and Mercury Records decided after merging with Island Def Jam to separate from the teenage trio.

The great experiment “Hanson” turned out to be an insane one-hit wonder, but trying to replicate the success of “Mmmbop” was an impossible mission. In 1999, two years after their breakthrough, the band’s career began to wane.

Stars like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the Spice Girls had established themselves and pushed them out as teen idols.

The record company even went so far as to withdraw the funds earmarked for the tour to promote the album, leaving the three brothers paying for the tour out of their own pockets in late 2000.

A year later, the Hansons formed their independent label and left the mainstream world to achieve a style and status that allowed them to work together as brothers and as a band to this day.

In modern times, the Hansons have changed a lot, or maybe not that much. It is true that more than 25 years have passed. They have matured, but the three are still recognizable as adults.

The most remarkable thing about today’s Hansons, however, is that Isaac, Taylor and Zachary have a total of 15 children… and counting!

Interestingly, Isaac (1980), the eldest brother, has the fewest children, contributing only three to the newest Hanson generation.

Isaac (right on the photo) has been married to Nicole Dufresne since 2006. He met his wife at a concert and admits he fell in love with her as soon as he saw her on the fifth row from the stage. It happened in New Orleans in 2003.

Since then, the couple has had two boys and one girl: Clarke Everett Hanson (2007), James Monroe Hanson (2008), and Nina Odette Hanson (2014).

It’s Taylor (1983), the band’s middle brother, who brings the most children to the family, with a total of seven children.

The band’s lead singer married Natalie Anne Bryant in 2002 when he was just 19 years old. Since then, Jordan Ezra (2002), Penelope Anne (2005), River Samuel (2006), Viggo Moriah (2008), Wilhelmina Jane (2012), Claude Indiana Emmanuel (2018) and Maybellene Alma Joy (2020) have all joined the family.

The band’s youngest, Zac (1985), has five children, giving the three band members a total of 15 children.

Along with his wife Kathryn, they are the parents of John (2009), Junia (2011), George (2014), Mary (2017) and Quincy (2021).

The question is, will they keep adding to the family? It looks like Zac is sticking with five. “It could all be over,” he admitted to US Magazine.

A similar attitude seems to have been taken by Isaac, who seems happy with his three children. “I think the ship has sailed for me. I don’t think I’ll have any more children,” he said in the same interview, in 2021. Whether Taylor decides to have an eighth child remains to be seen.

The three brothers seem well aware that they want to convince their 15 children… not to form a band! However, they “have a guitarist and a couple of keyboardists, so we’ll see,” Isaac told US Magazine.

But they know firsthand: “If your passion is music, we will encourage you to pursue your dreams. And if you want to be a surgeon, that’s fine too,” jokes the older brother. And yes, that is Elijah Wood, at the height of the Lord of the Rings boom in 2003 posing with the brothers.

And if there’s one thing the Hansons members believe in, it’s their passion for music. Raised by their parents along with four other siblings, they grew up listening to  cassettes of Rock and Motown classics.

“We were homeschooled and spent a lot of time reading poetry and listening to rock ‘n’ roll. Our parents were very supportive and even tolerated a drum kit in the living room of our Oklahoma home,” Isaac recalled in a 2018 interview with The Guardian.

After leaving Mercury Records in 2003, the Hanson brothers founded the independent label ‘3CG Records’ to, among other things, release the 100+ songs that were rejected by their previous label for their second album ‘This Time Around’, which “only” sold just over a million copies.

And that to this day. Hanson is still active. In 2018 they released ‘String Theory’, a compilation of their hits with the Prague Symphony Orchestra. In 2021 they released their seventh studio album, ‘Against the World’.

And if that wasn’t enough, in the summer of 2022 they went on a world tour that took them to Europe, the United States, Latin America and Australia. A tour so big that it begs the question, can Hanson really be considered a one-hit wonder?

By the way, in case anyone is wondering: Yes, they did take all the children and their partners with them on tour. Just by having the family attend, they guaranteed a large audience!

Hanson’s 2022 tour wasn’t just a fluke. The band continues to perform regularly, particularly in the US. In fact, if you go to the band’s website you can see a long list of upcoming performances for 2026!

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