Song of the Day 3/21: Alex Melton, “MMMBop”

Alex Melton is a South Carolina-based multi-instrumentalist who’s made a name for himself on YouTube by making genre-twisting covers – country songs done as pop-punk and vice versa are his specialties – and doing it all as a one-man band, playing all the instruments and mixing it together by computer.

He’s been doing this for several years, so he’s got dozens of videos out there, but this one particularly struck me because “MMMBop” was a silly late-90s pop tune written and performed by Hanson, who at the time were three young brothers who looked like a boy band but actually wrote their own songs and played their own instruments.

The song was infectious enough to make No. 1 not just on the Hot 100 but in a dozen other countries too. At the risk of putting a worm in your ear, here’s a reminder of how it sounded.

I don’t know about you, but beyond the chorus I couldn’t make out more than about 15 words. I was intrigued by the challenge Melton presented himself – how could he turn this bit of fluff into an emo song? Well, he started by listening to the lyrics, and slowing the tempo enough so we could hear them. They turn out to work amazingly well as an emo cry from the heart, something Melton explains after the music portion of this video. Somebody in the comments said it sounds like a Counting Crows single, which about nails it.

Melton has a real talent for this. Here’s what he did with MGMT’s “Electric Feel.”