There is something powerfully subversive about conveying divisive opinions in a song so intoxicating that people cannot help but sing or hum along.
One such example is You Get What You Give, released in 1998 by LA pop-rock band New Radicals, a loose collective of studio and touring musicians focused around the talents of Gregg Alexander (lead vocals, guitar, songwriting and production).
Formed in 1997, New Radicals released one album, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, before splitting in 1999.
You Get What You Give is a stand-out track, a timeless, powerful piano-driven anthem that rails against big business, consumerism and the forces of oppression, and does so against a melodic backdrop that is enthralling, life-affirming and unabashedly optimistic.
By the time Gregg Alexander formed New Radicals he had already been signed and dropped by two major labels, A&M and Epic.
He was born Gregory Aiuto in Grosse Point, Michigan in 1970 and was raised in a conservative Jehovah’s Witness household.
In a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter Alexander recalled fooling around on the family piano “just instinctively writing my own melodies because I couldn’t really learn other people’s”. He then moved on to guitar and drums. “But the game-changer for me was seeing Prince in Purple Rain at thirteen or fourteen,” he said.
Alexander wasn’t just gifted – he was driven. By the age of 16 he had amassed an impressive catalogue of songs and in the summer of 1986 he contacted songwriter and producer Rick Nowels with a view to collaborating on a film soundtrack.
It was a gutsy move. Nowels was a major name and had risen to prominence in 1985 when he co-wrote the song I Can't Wait with Stevie Nicks and co-produced her album Rock A Little alongside Jimmy Iovine.
![Stevie Nicks - I Can't Wait (Official Video) [HD Remaster] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/aYrgcUojxLE/maxresdefault.jpg)
Nowels would go on to produce some of Belinda Carlisle’s biggest hits and co-write songs such as The Power Of Goodbye by Madonna (1998). He was a co-writer and producer on numerous Lana Del Rey albums such as Born To Die (2012) and Chemtrails Over The Country Club (2021). He also co-wrote hits with Del Rey such as Summertime Sadness (2012).
But one of his biggest credits remains his co-write on You Get What You Give with Alexander.
In the liner notes of Alexander’s debut album, Nowels recalled their first meeting.
“In the summer of ’86 I got a message on my answering service from ‘a Mr. Alexander’ regarding production on a song for a movie. When I returned the call, the voice on the other end informed me that he was a 16-year-old singer/musician from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, who has ‘thousands of songs’, and would like me to produce one of them for, oh . . . why not a film soundtrack?’”
Nowels asked Alexander to send him a tape. “Well, I don’t like to leave tapes around,” replied Alexander. So Nowels asked him to play something over the phone.
“The next thing I knew, I was driving down the freeway to meet Mr. Alexander,” said Nowels. “We sat in my car listening to his strange home demos, and after 15 minutes I told him we would make an album together.”
At the age of 17, Alexander moved to Los Angeles. Nowels helped him to secure his first record deal and produced his impressive yet little-heard first two albums, Michigan Rain (1989, Epic Records) and Intoxifornication (1992, A&M Records).
When both albums failed to make any impact, Alexander shifted his focus. He told The Hollywood Reporter that he “ripped up [the] few rules that applied to my first two records” and went on to produce an album almost entirely on his own.
In 1997, Alexander formed New Radicals, a band with no permanent members other than Alexander and his long-term collaborator Danielle Brisebois, a child actor turned musician. The album they created was Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too (1998).
Alexander told The Hollywood Reporter: “Most of that record was me pulling favours with studios or musicians that had played on earlier records and were like, ‘Oh, Gregg’s down on his luck – let’s go play on his demo for the hell of it, we’ll have a good laugh, have a couple of beers and maybe smoke a J or whatever.’”
Alexander managed to secure his third record deal when his demo was passed by a friend to legendary A&R music executive Michael Rosenblatt, who had signed Madonna and many major artists.
Rosenblatt was impressed and secured Alexander a deal with MCA Records.
Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too received rave reviews and You Get What You Give – written by Alexander and Nowels – was its standout track.
While most of the album was recorded on a low budget, You Get What You Give was perceived as a potential masterpiece and one that needed high-end production.
“You Get What You Give was the only time I had an unlimited budget,” Alexander told Dave Simpson of The Guardian in 2024. “That’s why that song has so many different sections and melodies. Pop. Rock. Soul. Pianos. I figured, ‘Nobody may ever even hear this so let’s throw in the kitchen sink and the bathwater as well.’”
Alexander told The Guardian that the song came to him following a dream in which he heard music coming from a house. “I walked in… and Joni Mitchell was in baby blue pyjamas. She said, ‘Have a seat’ and we talked about music. I wrote You Get What You Give the same day.”
By complete coincidence, in a 2002 interview with Rolling Stone, Mitchell described You Get What You Give as “the only thing I heard in many years that I thought had greatness in it”.
Mitchell and Alexander eventually met in 2017, at a pre-Grammy gala, as reported by Roger Friedman of the Showbiz 411 website.
When Mitchell was introduced to Alexander and told what songs he had written, her face reportedly lit up. "When I heard that song, I changed my mind about quitting the business, I was done,” Mitchell told Alexander. “I wasn't going to do anything more. But that is the most brilliant song. I am so happy to meet you.”
“I told her about the dream,” Alexander told Dave Simpson of The Guardian, “and she said, ‘Oh wonderful’, like she has coincidences like that every day. She must be some kind of lightning rod for all these magical things.”
From the very first bars of Rick Nowels’ rhythmic piano vamps and Alexander’s screeched “one, two, three, ow” count-in, You Get What You Give is an exuberant, compelling 120 bpm anthem that conveys a sense of boundless possibility.
John Pierce’s wonderfully fluid bass line makes the track fly, and he locks in seamlessly with drummer Gary Ferguson. Rusty Anderson – now best known as the lead guitarist in Paul McCartney’s touring band – plays guitar alongside Alexander, who takes the lead vocal. In addition to providing piano, co-writer Rick Nowell features on backing vocals.
Lyrically, the song takes aim at consumerism, imploring kids with “the dreamers’ disease” that they have the power to invoke change.
“Age fourteen, they got you down on your knees/So polite, we're busy still saying please/Frenemies, who when you're down ain't your friend/Every night we smash a Mercedes-Benz.”
In an interview with Billboard in 1997, Alexander also said the central theme of the song was “remembering to fly high and be completely off your head in a world where you can't control all the elements”.
For all its scathing criticisms, the song is ultimately a positive and uplifting clarion call. “Don’t let go, you’ve got the music in you/One dance left, this world is gonna pull through,” Alexander sings.
On the outro, Alexander takes aim at the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), health insurance companies, big bankers and corruption, before referencing artists such as Beck, Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson.
In an interview with Gianni Sibilla of MTV in 1999, Alexander said he wrote this section for the song as a test to see whether the media would focus on the important political issues of the first few lines or the celebrity references. As he suspected, the press overwhelmingly opted for the latter, while the political issues were largely ignored.
“I got the answer loud and clear because almost nobody asked me about the political lyrics, which are its legacy,” he told The Guardian. “Twenty-five years ago all that stuff was on the horizon but nobody could have imagined that it would get so much worse. That song was my own innocent attempt to fight the power.”
You Get What You Give was released on 3 November 1998 and was an almost overnight success, reaching No.1 in Canada and New Zealand, No.5 in the UK, charting across Europe and reaching No.36 in the US.
It also attracted widespread critical acclaim. Rolling Stone described the song as “a plea for sanity and humanity in a hyper-consumerist world”.
In the summer of 1999 Alexander disbanded New Radicals to focus on writing and producing for other artists. He didn’t look back.
In the years that followed he produced hits for artists such as Texas, Enrique Iglesias, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rod Stewart, Melanie C and Ronan Keating. AllMusic’s Stephen Erlewine described Alexander as “the catchiest, smartest professional mainstream pop songwriter of the early 2000s”.
On 20 January 2021, New Radicals reunited to perform You Get What You Give as part of the Inauguration of President Joe Biden.
In his autobiography, Promise Me, Dad, Biden called You Get What You Give his family’s “rallying theme song” during his late son Beau Biden’s terminal battle with a highly aggressive brain tumour. Alexander said that he hoped the band’s performance of the song could be a “tiniest beacon of light in such a dark time”.
In the three decades since its release, A-list artists across genres have singled the song out for praise.
In the liner notes to her 2004 compilation Artist’s Choice, Joni Mitchell highlighted the song again, praising You Get What You Give for "rising from the swamp of 'McMusic' like a flower of hope”.
In 2006, Ice-T was asked on Late Night with Conan O’Brien what songs he had heard that had impressed him in genres besides rap music. His only reply was You Get What You Give.
U2’s The Edge was another musician praising Alexander’s composition. He told Time magazine in 2006 that You Get What You Give is the song he is "most jealous of”, going on to add: “I really would love to have written that.”
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