Songoftheday 11/25/20 - Something's been going on and I don't know what it is, you don't mind the taking girl but you don't know how to give...

 

 

"Where's The Love" - Hanson

from the album Middle Of Nowhere (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #27 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 6

 

Today's song of the day comes from the pop group Hanson, who landed a #1 pop hit with their debut major-label single "Mmmbop" in the spring of 1997.  The second song from their Middle Of Nowhere opus promoted to radio was the upbeat cheery and infectious throwback "Where's The Love". Written by the three brothers - Zachary, Taylor, and Isaac, along with Mark Hudson, himself a throwback to the 1970s as a member of the music/TV act the Hudson Brothers, the song itself was a perfect slice of pre-teen angst that would've found a place on any episode of the Partridge Family, only done ten times better with the production of Stephen Lironi. It quickly got on radio even as "Mmmbop" was selling like hotcakes, and I'm positive if it would have been a commercial single, it would've easily been massive. All three brothers have their time to shine on this record, and it's easily my favorite of theirs...

Since "Where's The Love" wasn't put out as a single, it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official pop Hot 100 chart. However the album track got enough radio love to place on the airplay component of that tally in August of 1997. The song also rose to #27 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 radio format list. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Canada (#2), Australia (#2), the UK (#4), New Zealand (#5), Hungary (#7), and Finland (#8), and reached the top-40 in Austria, Belgium, France, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. 

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Here's the Hanson brother performing the song live in concert in 1997....

In 2003, they reworked the song into an acoustic jam...

The siblings took it even further with an orchestra for their String Theory album in 2018...

and lastly, at a show in Brazil in 2017...

Up tomorrow: R&B singer gets coerced.