SPIN Magazine- ***/***** (three out of five stars)
MCA Records- AMP-
The brainchild of gifted student and free spirited juvenile delinquent Gregg Alexander, the New Radicals are looking to set the world on it's collective ear. This major label debut is chock full of high energy and eclectic groove pop with an edge. A peppy and melodic look at the issues and attitudes of the day, Brainwashed exposes a road worn soul that has seen the ups and downs that society has to offer. Eye opening lyrics like "Most ignorance is bred at home, Good Christian Families? Then why condone petty hatred of anything different or new, The fat girl hung herself in June" from the title track, and ear opening tunes like the catchy opener "Mother, We Just Can't Get Enough" make this a record to be reckoned with.
SLAMM San Diego CD Review
**** (4 stars-highest rating!)
"We're in it so let's acknowledge it- pop culture," rants New Radicals singer/songwriter/producer Gregg Alexander. "Admist an arsenal of souless fake punk, wannabe icons, who tug at the pant leg of mainstream consciousness. Maybe youve been brainwashed too," Alexander's maiden recording endeavor conveys this message through poignant and unnervingly direct vocals and kick-ass music.
Maybe You'e Been Brainwashed Too is the kind of music which penetrates the depths of American consciousness. It stirs up underlying cultural memories of good old rock and roll (Alexander sounds eerily like Mick Jagger), and mixes in references to contemporary iconography. The end result is a soulful blend of tunes, a unique mix of alternative rock containing elements which run the gambit from soft vocals to socially conscious punk.
"You Get What You Give" has turned the New Radicals into overnight stars and should prove to be truly enduring. The rollicking lyricism of the song laid over piano accompaniment incites the listener to get with the high energy groove as the music becomes more striking with each repitition. Maybe is amazingly mature work for a debut Alexanders project proves that the system has not subjugated him to the dull musical drudgery of the mainstream, and that radical expression has not lain down and died.
New Radicals don't sound particularly new or all that radical, for that matter, but they sure are catchy as hell. The group represents a new improved identity for on Gregg Alexander, a fellow who had a forgottable debut album with A&M Records in 1989-- I know because I've forgotten it entirely. Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too wont disappear from consciousness so easily. Alexander has come into his own in a big way on the wildly infectious and intermittently deep-thinking Brainwashed, a song-cycle manifesto that's one of 1998's most pleasant suprises.
The hit "You Get What You Give" is melt-in-your-mouth ear candy, vaguely reminiscent of the opinionated power pop of the woefully underattended World Party, but with a passionate oddball bounce all its own. Graced by Alexander's Jaggeresque vocal, the song also features an apparent put-down of Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson and -egad- Beck. This, along with an apparent anti-drug stance, is the closest thing to real radical move on Brainwashed. For once in an age of disappointing, post-alterna one-hit wonders, there's more where that came from here, including the drop-dead-gorgeous "Som eday We'll Know" the slow burning "I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the ending" and the unforgettably titled "Jeho vah made this whole joint for you" If you indeed get what you give, Alexander stands to score BIG time.
David Wild
From MTV News Online
Former New York street singer Gregg Alexander is the driving force behind the New Radicals, the group that's scored a mall-thrashing hit with its new single, "You Get What You Give" the first from the debut album, "Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too"
In the song, Alexander throws out a dis to such contemporary musical luminaries as Hanson, Beck, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson, whose butt Alexander offers to kick. MTV News asked the leader of the New Radicals if he feared any reprisals from the artists or the entourages.
"Accually, the truth about that particular lyric," Alexander said, half-heartedly, "is that I'm a major major major fan of Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson. I wanted to make sure they got as much exposure as possible."
In response to that live, MTV's Kurt Loder caught up with Marilyn Manson recently and asked him about the unexpected lyrical attack, which Manson said he found irritating for only one particular reason.
"I'm giving an open invatation to the singer of the New Radicals" Manson said, "Because he's all strange and spiritual, and challanged me in one of his songs. A lot of people would say, "y'know don't give him the attention, cause that's what he wants.' But I think I'll crack his skull open if I see him."
"What does the song say?"Loder asked.
"Well, you guys are playing it," Manson said, "it says something like 'Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson, come around here and we'll kick your ass in' I'm not mad that he said he'd kick my ass, I just don't want to be used in the same sentence with Courtney Love."
The New Radicals are playing a few promotional shows prior to the holidays, and are looking to kick off a U.S tour in early 1999.
A Radical Approach
Gregg Alexander and his one-man project, New Radicals, take the music industry, and society in general, to task on the Radicals' debut album, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too, and single "You Get What You Give." But Alexander is no gloom-and-doom merchant; he makes his case with appealing, upbeat music that takes in styles as varied as worldbeat and Rolling Stonesy dance-rock. He used upwards of 19 musicians to put his vision on tape.
A native to Grosse Point, Mich., Alexander left his Jehovah's Witness family at 16 to crash the Grammy Awards ceremony. He lived for a while in Los Angeles, but spent more time on the road: During 12 cross-country drives and a stopover in London, he sampled the culture that he would evenually skewer with his music. He got his record deal after a show in New York's famed misfit hangout Tompkins Square Park. Alexander talked with RockNews.com about his wandering life, about trying to be an independant thinker in the age of Baywatch and why you're better off talking to you cabdriver than the maite'd at your favorite restaurant. (Andrew Mathis)
Life on the Run
" Gregg Alexander: I ran away when I was 16... I had something running through my head that I couldn't really musically bring to its fruition in such a controlled enviroment as a suburb of Michigan... I needed to be on the astral plane. I needed to be sneaking into crazy situations. I had some pretty whacked-out things happen. Sometimes I think it's a miracle I'm alive. I've been on the run ever since..."
"I've had my good monthis and my bad months and I've had the journey of a lifetime. I've had some fun times and defanately a lot of times being stranded at a train station at 3:43 in the morning. As long as you have a feeling inside of your heart that you're not alone because you're in tune with what's going on in the big picture, whatever that is.... I think that's the reason I've been OK. I've had a crazy ride and I've also met a lot of different people and saw what they saw a little bit. The most intelligent and meaningful conversations I have sometimes will be with the third world taxi driver that's driving you home-- not the maitre'd."
What's in a Name?
" The name 'New Radicals' came from the whole sentiment of us living in a society that's filled with free radicals, you know? Carcinogens--you drink a diet soda and it's basically saying in code, 'You're going to die in about seven years.' All the things that we see going on around us-- the only way for us to really rise above and be able to get out of it is to become free and to become radicals, not necessarily by bisting windows or ringing doorbells or watever kids do versus what adults to to be radical per se. Although there aren't that many avenuesleft. They've all pretty much been co-opted. 'New Radicals' is basiclly just saying, 'Whatever the statement means to you, take it and apply it to your own life."
The Medium Is the Message
"The album was just something that I think is apparent to all of us but we maybe haven't really put two and two together yet in our cognizant mind. When we look around, we're being hit by a hundred billoards telling us what to do-- what TV show to watch and 'you have to have a cellular phone' and all these things we all buy into. It seems to be turning into a global thing, one world. Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too is about trying to have a place ino our heart where we're aware of this. Maybe we talk about it with out friends and we talk about it with our families and it becomes the issue of the moment instead of who the girl from Baywatch is dating, because theres a lot more important things, more like what''s going on with the president and sstuff like that. It's about paying attention to what's relevant to our own reality and asking, 'Is the tail wagging the dog?' Are we getting caught up in this whole machinery that really doesn't give a s*** about us?
Art Imitates Life
"The artwork for the New Radicals record is kind of a little bit of a snapshot of where society is right now. The cover is little bit colorful and it's a snapshot of the aggressive marketing that we all get hit with... The back of it is maybe a half sarcastic but still with a bit of resignation in the eyes, co-opting of the whole mod-culture thing... I'm definitely not the happiest camper in the world on the back cover and there's the hand on the front like this big spider and there's a big barcode slapped right across there. I think it's just a picture on how... Whatever it is in society that turns you on or floats you boat, be prepared for somebody to be there at the other end to put a dollar sign on it."
Interview by Dave Schulps
MCA Records
New Radicals' Debut Album 'Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too' Hits #1 On Billboard's 'Heatseekers' Chart and Keeps Climbing UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif., Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Streaking to the top of a key national chart within weeks of release, the MCA debut album from New Radicals, ``Maybe You´ve Been Brainwashed Too,´´ hit #1 on Billboard Magazine´s ``Heatseekers´´ chart for the week ending December 26 and stayed there for the January 9th chart. This week the album graduates from the ``Heatseekers´´ chart and breaks into the Top 100, with a chart position of #79. The album´s success is being fueled by the debut single ``You Get What You Give,´´ an infectious and upbeat track that has already hit #8 on Billboard´s Modern Rock chart and #16 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart. Moreover, the video is currently in ``Buzzworthy´´ rotation on MTV.
New Radicals is the brainchild of singer/songwriter Gregg Alexander, a native of the Detroit area and long-time vagabond/revolutionary with a pro-human, anti-corporate message of love and liberation. His MCA debut album has received rave reviews since its release on October 20. An ``A-´´ review from Entertainment Weekly praised Alexander´s ``abundant optimism... 12 undeniably great, life-affirming songs,´´ while Rolling Stone hailed, ``Maybe You´ve Been Brainwashed Too´´ as ``one of 1998's most pleasant surprises... Alexander stands to score big time.´´
New Radicals will join Lenny Kravitz on tour for a few weeks of dates in March. Actual dates will be announced shortly, meanwhile New Radicals will keep busy playing some west coast club dates (see below for itinerary). As Alexander says, ``Music is the most immediate medium mankind has. We need to use it for something useful instead of making money for the Man.´´ Apparently, listeners and new fans of New Radicals are catching on.
The following is a complete listing of west coast dates for New Radicals:
January 24 Seattle, WA The Mountain radio show
January 26 Sacramento, CA Big Shots
January 27 San Francisco, CA Slims
January 29 Denver, CO KTCL radio Show
CELEBRITY Magazine album review
New Radicals
Ear candy with a cool message
What do you get when you mix the Smashing Pumpkins, Jamiroquai, and Mick Jagger, then add a dose of new-age trippiness and a healthy cynicism for all things corporate?
Well, it might sound something like New Radicals, a very '90s kind of band whose first release, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed too, packs a 12-song punch of ear-opening beats, memorable melodies and powerful, pleading vocals. Turn on the radio and you're sure to hear their first single, "You Get What You Give," featuring lyrics that manage to be silly and serious all at once, indulgent and challenging: Four a.m. we ran the miracle mile/We're flat broke/But hey we do it in style.
Lead singer Gregg Alexander---who drove cross-country 12 times while writing this album---says his group's music is out to rid the earth of everything from "Closed minds" to "Fat people-phobia." All the power to 'em--especially if they keep cranking out such good tunes along the way.
SPIN magazine album review
New Radicals
title: Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Label: MCA
Funk motion, velvet soul melodies, aqua marine pianos, and rolling rhythms just this side of full tilt dance distinguish this lovably flawed album dreamed up by Gregg Alexander, a Michigan born singer/guitarist. A few seasons ago and under his own name, he applied his studio-rat righteousness to U.S. heartland rock. Now, with New Radicals, Alexander takes a potentially messier Anglophile tack, flinging words like the Boo Radleys or Pulp, and aiming for harmonic epiphanies that approximate Prefab Sprout's intelligent sparkle. Occasionally--delivering a moody sway such as "I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away The Ending" with rangy slurs--Alexander stumbles onto an undigested Stonesiness only an American Midwesterner might care to reenact in 1998. But more often, New Radicals seem like enthusiastically unbuttoned Americans schooled in style councils and turtlenecks. Alexander jumps on the slogan-happy address with both hand and feet. "Wake up kids," he advises on "You Get What Yo Give," New Radicals' perfect moment, a song that updates Sister SLedge's "Lost in Music" without the merest whiff of Brut; it's a deserving radio and MTV smash with the harmonic teeth and intergreen touch of early Dexy's Midnight Runners or Simple Red. That brand of passion carries over into speedy glam valentines like "Jehovah Made This Whole Joint for You" as well as on ballads played closer to the vest, such as the pillowy "Gotta Stay High" and "Technicolor Lover" a quizzical blend of Prince and Paul Smith. Elsewhere, things just inevitable get away from Alexander, and he misplaces his transatlantic grip on how to harness the sound of losing control. In the end, perhaps New Radicals intentionally skip wall-to-wall perfection But therin lies the difference between their hot fun and hot air.
James Hunter
RADICAL CHIC
New Radicals' Gregg Alexander wants to be your enlightened pop star
Holding court in his darkened rehearsal lair in Los Angeles, New Radicals brain trust Gregg Alexander cuts an inposing figure. His 6'5" frame topped by a dome that has been shaven inmate-bald, the 28 year old is given to wild gesticulations and tablepounding when he's making a particularly salient point. At these moments, he resembles a cracked general plotting a quixotic revolution.
And, in a sense, he is. Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too, New Radicals' debut disc, is a Trojan horse left on the doorstep of a world gone ill. "If people dont start using word=of=mouth to talk about real problems, society is in deep s***," he says solemnly. "A voice on the radio isn't gonna mean anything if a country is bombing the s*** out of every place."
Such proselytizing is common on Brainwashed, a melodic, if not contadictory, collection of rants against consumer society, celebrity culture, and institutionalized apathy, set against a backdrop of innocuous-sounding blue-eyed soul-pop. The album's hit single "You Get What You Give" is orchestrated Up With People pop notable for a dis of Beck, Courtney Love, and Marilyn Manson, which ends, "Come around we'll kick your ass in." The video recasts "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in a New York shopping mall, and throws in some Planet of the Apes style class warfare for good measure.
Alexander insists that calling out La Love, et al., in the single's causting coda wasn't his intention. Rather, he wanted to see if he media would focus on the preceding lines (which broach more "human existence-altering" topics) or the celeb-centric cluster that follows. He says his experiment produced a "Real revelation": Everyone's obseesing over the name calling.
Alexander's dance friendly diatribes raise the question: incredibly cynical exercise in prepackaged psedo-rebellion, or a gutsy (if naive) attenpt to manupulate the beast from within? Aexander acknowledges the inherent irony, but notes that fame is the tallest sopbox going for an earnest young man with a wake up call to deliver. "Rock stars, film stars, and sports stars are the last renegades of society," he says. "The Problem is, nobody's using it for anything but thier own selfish benefit."
Alexander's theories on the proper application of celebrity are, perhaps, tempered by his own protracted tango with fame. Raised in Grosse Point, Michigan, by a "low-grade dysfunctional" family whose matriarch switched religions on a monthly basis, Alexander split at 16 and scored his first record deal at 17. He released two much-ignored major label albums under his own name in 1989 and 1992, then signed with MCA in late 1997. "It's his time now, it wasn't back then," says Micheal Rosenblatt, the MCA A&R guy who afforded Alexander his third shot. "He's got something to say. Hopefully, people will listen." Even if he's saying it from a glass house? "The Sex Pistols did that very well, too."
And Alexander's savvy spinmeistering would make Malcolm McLaren proud. "Now, I have more of a sense of how to make the band more relevant to the big picture, the world at large--" Alexander suddenly cuts himself short, and unleashes a self-conscious cackle. "How's that for arrogant?"
Tim Kenneally
Radical Thought, Life-Affirming Music
By Darryl Morden
The New Radicals' success has been
bolstered by the hit single "You Get What You
Give." The music and vocals echo the likes of
World Party and the Kinks' Ray Davies (the
latter a reference that makes Alexander
smile). The song reads like an anti-suicide
tract, a strike against despondency with the
chorus: "Don't let go/You've got the music in
you/One dance left/This world is gonna pull
through/Don't give up/You've got a reason to
live/Can't forget/You only get what you
give."
"People feel like they're at the end of
their rope in a world more systematically
designed to make human functions
unmanageable."
"Four years ago, it may not have made
sense -- even a year from now," Alexander
says. "It's a song of its time. Maybe people
feel like they're at the end of their rope in
a world more systematically designed to make
human functions unmanageable."
Perhaps the song rings so true -- as do
other tracks, such as "In Need of a Miracle"
and the title song -- because Alexander's
lived those words and feelings. Growing up in
Grosse Point, Michigan, he was a poster boy
for the slogan "question authority" when it
came to his school. Music was the obvious
retreat. He played electric guitar in a band
with his brother on the drums.
"We'd bash it out, " Alexander says.
"Everything from Billy Squier to things like
Rick James and Smokey Robinson's 'Cruisin.'"
But the real power was found in British rock,
especially the Who and the songwriting of
Pete Townshend. "He's more important than
Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin
combined," Alexander says. "That should piss
some people off, but he's undervalued. Ray
Davies, too."
Despite the permeating (and appealing)
melancholy of Brainwashed, Alexander is
constantly looking for -- and often finding
-- affirmations.
"It became a trend in the '90s to hate, to
be cynical about life. People are expected to
define themselves, their careers, points of
view, fashion style, musical taste -- all to
be judged by the age of 21," Alexander says
with disgust. "It's stunted the spiritual
growth of 95 percent of this country."
Alexander is also a believer in music as a
great motivator, but only when mass appeal
enters the picture. "In pop music, like most
mediums, you're amusing -- till you start
being culturally relevant, with a lot of
ideas and ideals that might be truly scary to
the status quo."
Who is Gregg Alexander? The creative force
behind New Radicals is an unknown, but it is
unlikely that he will stay that way. With his
debut album, Maybe You've Been
Brainwashed, Too, Alexander has spun the
roulette wheel of stardom. He's going to win,
too. His sound is fresh and fun, his lyrics
are catchy and meaningful. It's too bad that
it all sounds as fake as the Spice Girls.
Radio and MTV have given extensive
exposure to "You Get What You Give," the
first single off Maybe, and for good
reason. It's a great song, with all the flash
and pizazz that make superstars out of former
unknowns such as Alexander.
The rest of Maybe isn't quite as
intriguing as "You Get What You Give," but
it's not half bad, either.
"I Don't Wanna Die Anymore" is one of
Maybe's slower tracks, but also one of
its best. Alexander's vocals are excellent;
his unusual sound is perfect for tracks like
this.
On that note, it's important to recognize
that one of New Radicals' strongest qualities
is Alexander's voice. His nasal twang is a
step away from what we expect from popular
music lately. It's a good thing, and the best
thing about the album.
Other exciting New Radicals moments include
"Jehovah Made This Joint For You" and
"Someday We'll Know."
Alexander is still the driving force
behind the music, but both of these tracks
feature music that demands attention. The
simple instrument structures and powerful
choruses make these worth at least one
listen, if not 10 or 12.
Maybe's title track is a bit of a
letdown, but so is the rest of the album if
viewed under certain light.
The biggest disappointment on Maybe
is its overall plastic feeling. The album
seems fake, like Alexander wasn't really the
one in charge of his sound.
There's a bit of Milli Vanilli-Spice Girls
formulated pop residue, but it can be
ignored. According to the liner notes,
Alexander wrote, arranged, and produced the
album. Maybe he really is that good. Only
time will tell.
Despite its shortcomings, Maybe You've
Been Brainwashed, Too is a fine piece of
work. The New Radicals are a force to be
reckoned with. The variety of sounds, unusual
instrument pairings and Alexander's unusual
voice make this a great album for just about
any mood.
New Radicals release is new, radical
Hilton Price
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