Music

'90s one hit wonders New Radicals give first interview in 15 years

by Nicole Villeneuve

We, like I’m sure most of you, remember fondly the one-hit-wonder that is The New Radicals, with their ranting, Hanson-calling-out single “You Get What You Give,” and its accompanying video, aka, the best music video to be set in a mall. REMEMBER?

Of course you do. We’ve revisited the video’s fashion inspirations in the recent past, and even explored the later-years songwriting career of the band’s singer/figurehead, Gregg Alexander. Dude won a Grammy for writing Santana and Michelle Branch’s “The Game of Love,” for one, but he did that—as well as hits for Enrique Iglesias, S Club 7, and tons more—under an alias. Very mysterious.

This week, the Hollywood Reporter published Alexander’s first interview in 15 years, and in it, he details the disillusionment with the music industry that caused him to disappear in the first place, naming common promotional tasks such as recording goofy radio station IDs as part of the deal he just wasn’t into.

So he left the scene, if not the industry entirely, and years later was contacted by a mutual writer/director/musician friend of his and Bono’s, John Carney, previously known for his Oscar-winning heart-tugging Once, about his new music-based film, Begin Again, starring Keira Knightly and Adam Levine. “We were on the phone for about 90 minutes, just talking about film and music, and it became evident rather early on that he is definitely a genius,” Alexander told the HR‘s Scott Feinberg.

Alexander would end up writing most of the music for the film. SO IS HE BACK? New Radicals headline Coachella? Tour the New Radicals’ only album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too in full? …Probably not.

“For artists the dream is to touch people with your art. Now it seems like artists are props for selfies.”