Hanson

The Hanson brothers came along in the summer of 1997 with "MMMBop," a song bursting with guitars and harmonies and shockingly unstupid lyrics about the meaning of life. Isaac (16, guitar, the Shy One), Taylor (14, keyboards, the Hot One), and Zac (11, drums, the Bonaduce) only took an mmmbop to melt every barrette in America, as the home-schooled Tulsa boys roller-boogied through a video that looked like a Dynamite cover shoot circa 1974, a kiddie utopia of after-school California sunshine. They've never topped the super-sugar-crisp rush of "MMMBop," but songs like that only roll around once in any band's career -- the Jackson Five never topped "I Want You Back," either. And Hanson has already made more good records than the Bay City Rollers, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco Family, and Kristy and Jimmy McNichol combined!

With a little help from its producers, the Dust Brothers, Hanson plays its own instruments and writes its own songs on Middle of Nowhere, as Liz Phair look-alike Taylor hits high notes that could make a grown woman blush. "Where's the Love" made teen girls scream "Right here, baby!" at the Taylor posters on their walls, while "Weird" and "Yearbook" were pure adolescent ache. But the Hanson boys were too young to fall in love, and we were all too young to know. One thing Hanson was definitely too young to understand was quality control, because it flooded the market with a Christmas album ("Everybody Knows the Claus"!), a live album ("Money [That's What I Want]"!), and early demos (boys, boys -- enough already). By Underneath, they already sounded old-fashioned; in the wake of "MMMBop," the radio had clogged up with teen-pop disco, while Hanson was evolving into a bang-up rock & roll band. But "MMMBop" still sums up the punch of a perfect pop song -- it comes out of nowhere to rock your socks off, and then in an mmmbop, it's gone. (ROB SHEFFIELD)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide