“Hey” confronts a woman preoccupied with fashion and wealth. Faith-based metaphors appear on several cuts. The harmonizing Hanson boys try to keep a woman’s beauty from blinding them to the truth (“Crazy Beautiful”), and won’t quit on strained relationships (“Dancin’ in the Wind,” “Underneath,” “Lost Without Each Other”). A guy leaves a girl who causes him “Misery.” Other tunes criticize hypocrisy(“Strong Enough to Break”) and bask in the overwhelming emotion of new love (“Deeper”).
Lines on the forlorn “Believe” (which concludes, “I can’t believe in nothing”) seem to paint a romantic portrait of suicide. It says, “Murder wears a friendly smile/Like the perfect end in a plastic vial/No pain/Sorry I can’t seem to stay/But this bird was meant to fly away.” A guy asks a girl to “take a walk on the wild side” (“Get Up and Go”). “Penny & Me” speaks of burning passions and cigars.
Now 23, 21 and 18, the “MMMBop” brothers have entered adulthood and left some of their innocence behind. Families who embraced them for their uplift will puzzle at pessimistic moments on Underneath.
