Michigan-born lead vocalist, songwriter and producer Gregg Alexander is on a mission and much of it is laid out in the lyrics of his songs. Granted, those who have only heard the single remember a couple of lines in the rhythmic closer, which impacts like a headline in a supermarket tabloid:
"Beck
Hanson/Courtney Love/Marilyn Manson/You're all fakes/Run to your
mansions/Come Around/We'll kick your ass in." "Whenever people ask me about that, the thing I try and impress upon them with that outro part of the song is the more relevant part of the lyric is -- 'Health insurance rip off lying fda big bankers buying/ fake computer crashes dining/cloning while they're multiplying'," explains Alexander. "Quite frankly, all the people that I've met ask me about that lyric and the media always ask me about the Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love and Beck Hanson thing, which was a little bit of a test for me to see if it was the media or the people who care about the bullshit. That was the motivation behind that lyric."
There's a greater message to the song and to the album, a message which sums up the reason Alexander agreed (yes, agreed) to get back in the corporate world of rock 'n' roll in the first place. You see, he'd already gone through the whole major label thing.
At 17, doing a R&B/soul-vibed thing, he was signed as a solo artist to A&M, and released one album, Michigan Rain (1989), which got "lost" amid a corporate shuffle. Three years later, he got another deal, this time with Epic and re-released that first record as well as a follow-up,Intoxifornication, which died a quick death during grunge fever.
"On some level I had resigned myself to maybe retiring to an island in Spain somewhere, getting a job peeling bananas," says Alexander.
Instead, when he saw the incredible response friends and industry folk were having to his music, he had no qualms about signing with MCA. "I started getting a second wind in terms of thinking I could use rock 'n' roll for a purpose other than self-aggrandizement or celebrity or all that kind of bullshit," he explains.
"That's what had made me retreat from following through what I wanted to do and being as aggressive as I was at 17. I started to see what the rock 'n' roll dream was about and it was not what it had been idealized as. It was really about corporate bottom line and quarterly reports and all that kind of shit and I didn't want anything to do with that.
Once I made a decision to use the machinery for my own opportunity to talk about those ideas -- 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too,' talking about where society's at and once I thought I could make a statement about where society is at the end of the millennium, then I started becoming a bit more motivated about putting my songs out there."
Below Alexander talks about some key lines in "You Get What You Give":
* "Wake up kids/We've got the dreamers disease/Age fourteen/They got you down on your knees," the song begins.
Who are "they"?
"In this day and age, it could be everyone from a family that's bought into all the accepted mechanisms of society. Your mom and dad might believe in the American Dream. That's a lie. It's never really been for any of us, except for the rich or the ultra-rich. So it could be teachers who don't really care about their students. Basically, it's injustice across the board, anything that represents injustice or something that's not for the betterment of humanity, and people being able to be free to do and say what they want, whether that's a job trying to hold you down or people, politics, sexism, homophobia or anything like that."
* "Frienemies/Who when you're down ain't your friend/Every night/We smash their Mercedes-Benz."
Ever smashed a Merce?
"No. That song is speaking more metaphorically, referring to if somebody were to go out joy-riding and smash up cars. If you're going to key somebody's car, do it to somebody driving a Rolls Royce, not a Pinto."
* "Don't give up/You've got a reason to live/Can't forget/We only get what we give."
Do you believe in karma?
"Absolutely. I don't know if I believe in instant karma. I think that there are some people who are complete pigs, who obviously are major successes. I would say in big business, you get what you take (laughs). But I would say for the 95 percent of society who are making less than $120,000, I would say, for us, in the long term, we're going to get what we give because if we keep perpetuating all of the bullshit and lies that we've been sold on, if we don't, at least, in terms of who we talk to, to our friends and a word of mouth thing, if we don't fight those things and talk about those things, then we're just adding to it.
"It's like when you're at family gatherings or you're in social situations and there's injustice or unfair things happening. If we don't address them or make them right when they happen or in the short term afterwards, we may as well just be agreeing with it because we're just acquiescing to it. But it's difficult unfortunately.
"And that's why rock 'n' roll is such a special medium because it's the one medium where you can you can get up and scream and point at something, whereas to fight injustice in the context of a job, say you fight sexism and you're a girl and you see a boss doing something unfair, you may well lose your job. We live in a very oppressive world right now."