Turns out, we’ve all been singing Hanson’s “MMMBop” wrong

It’s pretty much a necessity for all ’90s kids to love Hanson’s “MMMBop” — which, by the way, came out two decades ago, meaning we’re all feeling pretty old right now. But the band just dropped a major bombshell: for these past 20 years, we’ve all been singing it wrong. MMM-what?!

In an interview with Vulture the Hanson brothers — Zac, 30; Taylor, 33; and Isaac, 35 — explained that they haven’t heard a single good cover of their song. . . mainly because it’s being sung wrong.

“You know why? People can’t sing the chorus right,” Isaac told Vulture, adding that Bruno Mars could probably “kill it.” “Most of the time they syncopate it wrong.”

Added Taylor, “Someone needs to either make it totally their own in a genuinely unique way, or it needs to be a band that has a sensibility for old R&B.” He suggested Fitz and the Tantrums “could maybe do it.”

SOOO, apparently, we’re getting the syncopation wrong. The word “MMMBop” must be said *just* so. Oh, and even though it sounds like the happiest song in the entire world, the Hanson brothers say we’ve got that all wrong, too.

“It does tap into a theme we’ve continued to have, which is to interweave relatively serious thoughts — the verses, you know. . . It’s not exactly sunshine and rainbows, but it’s packaged in a way that it’s looking for the moral to the story,” Taylor said.

They describe their songs as “happy sad songs.” “Trying to find the optimism,” Isaac told Vulture, with Taylor adding, “Exactly, but it’s an optimism that’s framed with realism.”

In our defense, it’s a little hard to see the darker side of a music video that looks like this:

Luckily, the Hanson brothers understand that we didn’t get the serious message from the song after the first few (hundred thousand) listens. “I think a lot of people did not [see that],” Taylor said. “And that makes sense. But hopefully over time, the staying power of that song is about the fact that it’s more than it looks like at first glance. That hook is what gets you in, but what’s below that is what keeps you there.”

Or, it’s the fact that “MMMBop” is the catchiest song in the entire world, and that it makes us relive our happy ’90s memories. . . even if we’re singing it wrong.