Songoftheday 8/11/21 - Wake up kids we got the dreamers disease, age fourteen they got you down on your knees...
"You Get What You Give" - New Radicals
from the album Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4
Today's song of the day comes from the New Radicals, a group started as a music project for singer/songwriter/producer Gregg Alexander, along with his friend and former child actress Danielle Brisebois. Alexander, who grew up in Michigan, was signed on with A&M records at a young age, and released two solo albums that went unnoticed. Brisebois, who was won most for being the abandoned relative of Edith Bunker on All In The Family, as well as being in the Broadway cast of the musical Annie. In fact, Danielle had already seen her voice in the top-40 in 1998, with Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life" sampling her performance. She had a minor hit in the UK in 1995 with a remake of the classic soul song "Gimme Little Sign" (UK #75) that was produced by Alexander.
Booted from A&M, Alexander started up the New Radicals mostly as a one-man band act, and signed with MCA. Their debut album, which had Brisebois and a cavalcade of ace studio musician ringers like Paul McCartney's axe man Rusty Anderson, released the first and only New Radicals album in 1998. The lead single from the track was a stellar slice of power-pop "You Get What You Give", written by Alexander and Rick Nowels, who originally signed him to A&M and plays on the album. With its positivity and self-reliance message and perfectly mixed instrumentation, the song stood out on the radio. But where it shined most brightly was on MTV, where its music video that has the kids taking over the mall, instantly grabbed people. And of course there's the tag at the end of the song where Gregg spits off world issues like Bob Dylan before taking beef with Beck, Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love, and Hanson - a most unlikely quartet of namechecks around. The buzz was real around that, and soon the Radicals found themselves with one of the most glorious "one-hit wonders" ever...
"You Give What You Give" became the New Radicals' first and only top-40 pop hit in January of 1999. The song climbed as high as #8 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart, and just missed the top ten at #11 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format list. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Canada and New Zealand for a week each, and reached the top ten in Ireland (#4), the UK (#5), and Spain (#6). It also made the top-40 in Australia (#13), Italy (#14), Norway (#15), Switzerland (#18), Denmark (#20), Germany (#21), the Netherlands (#22), Sweden (#27), Iceland (#29), Austria (#33), and Belgium (#36W/#42F). The Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too album, released in October of 1998, just missed the top-40 on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #41, but went to #10 in the UK. The set sold over a million copies in America.
Despite the warm reception for "You Get What You Give", their follow-up, the more pensive but equally earworthy "Someday You'll Know", was mostly passed by mainstream and rock radio, although it did make it up to #28 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 radio chart.
There would not be another New Radicals record, and Alexander would go on to concentrate on writing and producing. He wrote "Game Of Love" for Santana, which went to #5 on the Hot 100 in America and won a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration. The 2013 movie Begin Again had music from Alexander, and was nominated for an Oscar for his composition "Lost Stars".
(10/10)
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Here's the band performing on the kids sketch show All That...
and on the Tonight Show, where the band tore the house down...
Next up, at a televised convert in 1999. I was so lucky to have seen them live in Philadelphia as a part of a multi-act charity show...
Alexander and Brisebois reunited for President Joe Biden's inauguration special; Biden's late son Beau was a fan of their song....
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