Modern Rock No. 1s: Crash Test Dummies and "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm"
Once ... there was this band ... who ... sung about kids' maladies and quickly climbed the charts. I couldn't quite explain it, but the song holds up better than I expected.
Crash Test Dummies - “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 1 week (March 12, 1994)
Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Beck - “Loser”
Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Tori Amos - “God”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Ace of Base - “The Sign”
Once, there was this Substack writer who would misbehave in class when he finished a test or completed silent schoolwork. He wasn’t inherently bad, mind you, but was bored and looking for some kind of outlet for his youthful jubilance.
When the teachers finally made him stop, he was forced to sit with a box around his desk. When that didn’t work, he had to be put in the front of the room behind the teacher’s desk. When that didn’t work, well, they kept the desk where it was and re-added the box.
Eventually, he grew out of it, but reputations are hard to shake. Given these disruptive (but benign) outbursts of exuberance and frustration, this Substack writer was often maligned and had difficulty fitting in with people all throughout the early years of grade school and into middle school.
What’s fascinating about this Substack writer is that he wasn’t alone: Almost every kid in his class dealt with some kind of mental/physical affliction or malady that made them “different” from everyone else. One kid had a very visible upper gum line, and he was mercilessly picked on for being “a horse.” One kid had a reputation for being a “nose-picker,” which was false but persisted for years. Some of the ladies in the classroom were picked on for speech problems or clothing issues, while others were chided for facial blemishes or for not conforming to whatever constituted a “clique” in those years.
It’s against this backdrop that Brad Roberts and Crash Test Dummies struck a nerve when their first and only Modern Rock Tracks chart topper took over the U.S. college and mainstream radio airwaves in the spring of 1994, a simple ditty that holds the record for the longest song title containing a single letter: “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm.”
First, I need to talk a bit about the band, especially as it relates to my social circle. I have a longtime friend we’ll call Bruce K. No, too obvious … B. Kent. At any rate, BK loved Crash Test Dummies, and still does. I think he was most enamored with God Shuffled His Feet, the album that featured “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” but all throughout the ‘90s and into the 2000s, he was (and honestly still is) the only person I’ve ever met who admitted to being a straight-up Crash Test Dummies fan.
My other friends would tease him about it (just like all the kids in “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” … weird symmetry there, now that I think about it), mostly out of our own ignorance (CTD never had another chart hit on the same level of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”) and mostly because the song had become a bit of a punchline of its own by the late ‘90s. Indeed, at one point, VH1 listed the song 15th on its list of the “50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever.” By the time we were in college at the end of the decade into the new millennium, there wasn’t anyone who outright admitted to CTD fandom. Except BK.
Credit where credit is due: BK likes what he likes, and he’s certainly not alone. In fact, a good chunk of the band’s native Canada loves them — or, at least, loved them. When they released their first album, The Ghosts That Haunt Me, it peaked at #2 on the Canadian album charts and sold more than 400,000 copies, which earned them 4x platinum status in Canada. And, to be honest, the lead single from that album is pretty good: the sublime, contemplative “Superman’s Song.”
Strangely, it was the band’s success in the U.S. that sparked a Canadian “backlash” of sorts. While God Shuffled His Feet reached #9 on the Billboard album charts in the U.S., it peaked at #11 in Canada and sold a slightly underwhelming 300,000 records. In the U.S., the band was 2x platinum, with sales of more than 2 million copies.
Roberts recalled the fascinating turn in their Canadian fandom in an interview with Greg Prato of SongFacts in 2018:
In Canada, our first record went multi-platinum, and we had a huge following and huge tours in Canada. When our second record came out, Canada - being the country that loves to eat its own - decided we weren't going to have any success at all.
My hometown newspaper printed a scathing review of our second record, which they didn't even have the nerve to write themselves with one of their own staff writers - they just picked something off the wire. … After that, we had trouble getting any kind of radio play at all. … It wasn't because the song was unusual or unacceptable. In fact, the first song that we were very successful with, called “Superman's Song,” was quite unusual in itself, and also a ballad. So, this was a reaction against the band. It's not unusual in Canada for this to be the case, I'm sad to report.
I guess Canada’s loss was the U.S.’s gain, because “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” started generating airplay on American college radio stations and exploded from there. Over the course of several weeks, airplay swelled to the point where the song topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart for the week ending March 12, 1994. A month later, the week ending April 16, 1994, Crash Test Dummies cracked the Billboard Hot 100’s top 5, peaking at #4 among a crowd of artists including Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and Ace of Base.
What’s most remarkable about the song’s success is its content, a series of three short stories about children dealing with a variety of awkward physical features or familial issues. As I mentioned at the outset, the stories referenced in “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” are seemingly reflective of situations almost any kid might have experienced in their lives, which may have played a role in its success. As noted in reviews of songs like “Loser,” “Heart-Shaped Box,” and “Daughter,” Gen X was deep in the throes of self-reflection and melancholy at this time, so the somber, reflective subject matter seemed to hit the right spot in the zeitgeist.
And while I may be the only one, I always interpreted the songs as metaphorical, using simple language to describe deeper, traumatic issues. “Birthmarks all over her body” and hair that “turned from black into bright white” always felt like veiled ways of referring to child abuse, much like parents who made a kid “come directly home right after school.” But, it turns out, Roberts was being literal in his descriptions of actual kids (including himself), as he mentions in his SongFacts interview:
That song is generally based on three kids who are outsiders. Each verse is about a different child. The child in the first verse, that story came from a combination of events. I was in a couple of bad car accidents when I was a little kid, so I was fascinated by them. … And I had heard a story about a guy who was also in an accident, only in this case, on a boat that was in Niagara Falls. The boat was going towards the Falls, so the people could see it as closely as they could, and then it turns away. … It turned out that the boat did not go over the edge, and he was able to get back. But his hair turned from black into bright white. His whole head.
Verse two is about the girl with the birthmarks. I actually have a birthmark at the base of my spine, which I was teased about a great deal when I was a little kid.
The third kid … when Pentecostal Christians get together every Sunday, some of them are moved to speak spontaneously. They claim that the spirit has entered their body and what they are saying is simply a transmission of that spirit. ... And the language that comes out, sometimes it's an ordinary language, but quite often it sounds like gibberish. For my friend, as a little child going to school, she found this terrifying, needless to say, because her parents were the people that ran her life. … They seemed to just become different people, and it really terrified her.
In the same way Beck’s “Loser” was not written to specifically refer to the slacker mentality that presumably infected Generation X, Crash Test Dummies’ “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” wasn’t intended to be a referendum on child abuse, but rather just a songwriter’s musings about kids and how little differences can turn into problems that affect how individuals view each other. I find that interpretation much more soothing in its own way, and makes me embrace the song with a bit more affection than I did at the time.
And while I can’t claim to have had white hair, birthmarks, or overtly Pentecostal parents, I think the overarching themes still struck home for an overweight, overstimulated kid who would go on to write a review about this very song 30 years later. I’m not the only one. Roberts mentioned the impact the song had on others who heard it and could relate to the lyrics:
Interestingly, I met a girl at a show who was a waitress there, and she had tiny little birthmarks all over her body. She said when she heard that song as a little kid, she thought it was meant for her. I was quite touched by it. I had never seen the kind of birthmark I have spread out like that. In my case, it's just one patch. In her case, they were tiny little marks all over her body, and she went through the same thing I did, although probably to a greater extent: being physically marked as different.
Even though the content is unique, the song itself features a number of elements that allowed it to stand out in both the alternative and pop music spheres in 1994. First and foremost is Roberts’ bass-baritone voice, a standout among lead singers at the time. When sung behind a slow-moving acoustic-folk background of guitars and piano, Roberts adds an extra layer of melancholy and contemplative self-reflection, with the muted refrain between each verse punctuated by the title letters sung over and over.
The vocal flourish of the background singers — culminating in an almost church-choir-like drone as the final verse and refrain are sung — adds an air of both sincerity and seriousness. It’s easy by the end to forget that the song is just a quick snippet of reflections from Roberts’ childhood, not intended to have any other meaning other than finding those particular situations interesting and memorable.
While Crash Test Dummies burned bright in the alternative and pop landscapes of spring 1994, their time in the spotlight was relatively short lived. A follow-up single to “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” titled “Afternoons and Coffeespoons,” would peak at #13 on the Modern Rock Tracks charts and #66 on the Hot 100. Again, if this is one I would have paid attention to at the time, I might have been converted to a fan of the band. It’s a solid, up-tempo track.
The band would have one more quick moment in the spotlight, joining with Ellen Reid to perform a cover of “The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead,” first performed by former Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist XTC. Though the song never appeared on the U.S. charts, it did have a prominent place on the soundtrack to the movie Dumb & Dumber, which was a huge smash in the U.S. in 1994.
After this period, Crash Test Dummies found little success on the U.S. and Canadian charts, although they did put together a handful of albums. When they released 1999’s Give Yourself A Hand, my disc jockey partner Apex and I had the album’s lead single “Keep A Lid On Things” in heavy rotation on WERG-FM. We did this because, well, the song is ridiculous, and did little to stem the tide of teasing BK about his CTD affection. Not surprisingly, the song did not chart in the U.S.
I’m hesitant to call Crash Test Dummies an all-time great band, but they are a group that deserves some re-appraisal 30 years beyond their biggest success. I can honestly admit, having listened to a good chunk of God Shuffled His Feet for the first time this week, that the band has a pretty good sound and deserved the praise it received at the time. My friend BK did admit recently that he didn’t like a lot of their stuff after that album, which is a fair criticism since their musical direction did seem to skew away from their acoustic folk-rock roots. But their early ‘90s output really isn’t that bad, and at times is really good.
And, while I couldn’t quite explain it, I really enjoyed listening to “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” on regular repeat over the past few days. The song sticks with you, and not in a bad way. It’s like a warm hug, and as someone who can relate to the characters referenced in Brad Roberts’ memories, it’s nice to have a warm hug every now and then.
Rating: 8/10
Chart Check
Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
Very few choices to add to Chart Check this week, as only one song on the entire Modern Rock Tracks chart top 30 hit its peak during CTD’s run at the top. Fortunately, “Weird” Al can bail me out and add another track to the mix.
“Headline News” by “Weird” Al Yankovic (#4 - Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart):
Leave it to “Weird” Al to take a top-tier alternative/pop crossover hit and turn it into something just as awesome. For people of a certain age, the stories reflected in this song will bring back memories: Michael Fay’s caning in Singapore, the Tanya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan figure-skating kerfuffle, and Lorena Bobbitt’s maiming of her husband. The brilliant re-imagining of the “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” music video, complete with Al spoofing on Brad Roberts’ occasional mouth gyrations, makes this a must-see accompaniment to the original song. While this did not make the Modern Rock Tracks chart, it did peak at #4 on the “Bubbling Under the Hot 100” chart.
“Believe” by Dig (#19):
Los Angeles-based alt-rock outfit Dig peaked at #19 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart behind Crash Test Dummies with “Believe,” the only song from the band to chart in the U.S. It’s a pretty good song, to be honest. The track fits in nicely with the prevailing alt-rock sound at the time, and has some nice guitar and vocal flourishes throughout. The band released three studio albums in the ‘90s before disbanding in 1999, and despite a couple of reunions remain relatively obscure in the present day.
worm’s life is still so profoundly underrated
I remember "Keep A Lid On Things" getting a ton of airplay in Canada.