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MMMStop! Hanson's 25th-anniversary tour confirms you're old

Hey, 1990s kids, now it's your turn to feel ancient: The baby-faced band of brothers has been MMMBopping for decades.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read

First, Luke Perry ends up on the cover of AARP magazine, and now this?

Get your Geritol, Gen Xers and Millennials, Hanson is embarking on its "Middle Of Everywhere 25th Anniversary World Tour," the band announced Monday.

Which would be fine, except aren't the members of Hanson all still too young to drive?

Even though their big hit, "MMMBop," came out in 1997, Hanson formed in May of 1992, which is indeed coming up on a quarter-century ago. So technically the tour is honoring either the 25th anniversary of the band, or the 20th anniversary of the album "Middle of Nowhere," both of which seem impossible if you're old and Queen of Denial.

Remember 1992? The Atari 2600, the best video game console of all time (I will brook no arguments on this one) had only just been discontinued. George Bush was president. No, not that one. The other one. Johnny Carson was still hosting the "Tonight Show." Jack Nicholson told Tom Cruise he couldn't handle the truth (in "A Few Good Men," of course).

And Isaac (age 12), Taylor (age 9), and Zac Hanson (age 7), started a family band. Zac Hanson became the second youngest person ever nominated for a Grammy (after Michael Jackson, of course) in 1996, when he was 11. It's tough to think of the '90s without remembering the band's first major-label single, the peskily catchy "MMMBop," which hit No. 1 in 27 countries. You remember. It featured kids who might not have been old enough to shave yet singing about getting old and losing their hair.

Now they're all married, with 12 children between them, and fans seemed both thrilled and somewhat horrified by the thought of a 25th-anniversary tour.

Tuesday also happens to be Taylor Hanson's 34th birthday.

The tour will start in May in the brothers' home state of Oklahoma, and will take the band to 40 cities in the US and abroad. Get your Fanson For Life phone case now.

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