Crash Test Dummies Play “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”
Listen to this track by Winnipeg folk-pop quintet and celebrated Canadian hitmakers that made a splash on international charts, Crash Test Dummies. It’s “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”, a hit single from their second record God Shuffled His Feet released in the autumn of 1993 and helmed by ex-Modern Lovers and Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison as producer. The album followed up their very popular debut in Canada released two years before that established them as national favourites.
Lead singer and head writer Brad Roberts had written a number of songs on the band’s debut that deal with introspective topics from a straightforward and childlike perspective. Many of those touch on what it means to exist in a sometimes unforgiving and morally grey world where uncertainty and anxiety are common. By the time God Shuffled His Feet came out, the band had shifted away slightly from the Anglo-Celtic string band stylings of their first album. But even with a movement toward a more refined pop sound, these sometimes weighty themes were still well in place.
The new record found them a wider audience beyond their national popularity in Canada. Among other successes in Europe and in Australia and New Zealand, this track scored them top five positions on the US and UK charts. The song even won them a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Performance by a duo or group. It was and still is a unique tune in every respect with its unusual title and Roberts’ deeply intoned hum in the wordless chorus. Beneath the song’s lighthearted and simple melody, innocence meets cruel experience to lend the whole thing a unique gravity.
Musically, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” creates a compelling mix between Ellen Reid’s lilting piano line and Brad Roberts’ signature resonant and endearingly croaky baritone voice. The arrangement lends it a music box quality, while Roberts’ vocal melody seems to adroitly capture the cadence of a child telling a story. The contrast between its refined arrangement and its upfront lyrics is the engine that made this tune such a standout on pop radio all over the world.
Each verse of the song plays out like a story told by a child as if engaged in schoolyard gossip about other kids. Ultimately, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” is the sound of a kid’s perspective on how unpredictable and sometimes utterly overwhelming and nonsensical the world can be for a child. It also makes a comment on how unfriendly the restrictions of the adult world can be to the sensibilities and needs of children. It’s a world where kids find themselves in situations when sensitivity and empathy fails in favour of adult perspectives and agendas that demand obedience and submission.
When you’re a kid, sometimes it’s easy to think that you have to account for everything no matter how strange it is, and even if you don’t understand what’s happening or why. In each story, the kid in the picture – the boy who’s hair turns white, the girl with the birthmarks, and the kid with radically religious parents – has to account for circumstances over which they have no control. None of them can quite explain them. They’re just products of chance and accidents of birth. But they’re beyond the children’s ability to justify them to their peers enough to escape feelings of isolation, confusion, and shame.
Without being at all heavy handed, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” is a song about how children navigate social obstacles with very little support from the adults in their lives. It’s a song about the wrong kind of attention that makes a kid feel exposed and a potential object of ridicule. It’s a tune about the loneliness and helplessness uniquely felt by children and a reminder that stories like this are all too common in a society that demands a certain measure of conformity even and maybe especially from its children.
With the diversity and varied nature of the human experience understood, the demand for conformity in an unpredictable world becomes a no-win situation for everyone. If not white hair after a car crash, birthmarks all over one’s body, or weird parental religious practices, then it’s going to be something else to make a kid stand out in all the wrong ways. Yet with all that in place, there’s more to this song than an exploration of how hard it sometimes is to be a kid. It’s also a song that suggests what might be possible if we acknowledged that fact and acted on it by the time we reach adulthood.
In this, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” makes a case for more empathy and understanding that is free of judgement. It’s a song about isolation. But it’s also a call to compassion and empathy, too. It’s a reminder that life is pretty strange and sometimes there’s just no accounting for the weird things that can happen while we’re living it. It also suggests that every person lives in unique circumstances and has unique inner struggles of their own within all that. Trying to impose singular one size fits all values on them as to how they should define themselves just isn’t constructive. It’s not even realistic.
Being something of an oddity itself, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” is a subtle statement about embracing difference and perceived strangeness. Even if we also can’t quite explain things to others and to ourselves, we can still make a decision to embrace the people at the center of their circumstances instead of condemning them because of our lack of understanding. By accepting and valuing the stories of real people and being welcoming and not scornful of them, we can illuminate a path to a more compassionate world. We can come to accept our own foibles and weirdness at the same time.
After a series of line-up changes and several records after this one, Crash Test Dummies are an active band today. You can learn more about them at crashtestdummies.com.
To mark another milestone for this song and for the band in terms of their impact on the mainstream by 1993-94, here they are performing “Headline News” with Weird Al Yankovic at MuchMusic in Toronto. That song is of course a parody version of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” capturing some of the tabloid news items of the day including references to Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt. None more Nineties!
Enjoy!
#90sMusic #CanadianBands #CrashTestDummies #FolkPop #songsAboutChildhood
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