60 Songs That Explain the '90s - New Radicals—“You Get What You Give”

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Rob explores the New Radicals’ signature hit, “You Get What You Give,” performed for the first time in 22 years at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. This episode was originally produced��as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Rob Sheffield Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-M-S-U-S-I-S-I-C-A-N-D-T-A-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. Look out! It is an emergency episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. It is mid-January, 2021. And who could have foreseen that this humble enterprise dedicated as we are to like 30-year-old

songs would require an emergency episode? I certainly could not have foreseen this. And I'm your host, Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla. Nonetheless, emergency episode. It's like James Hardin got traded again. trust me, this is necessary. And trust me when I say that first, I need to tell you about the second to last time I saw the new radicals perform you get what you give on stage. The second of the last time I saw the new radicals perform you get what you give on stage was the culmination of the 90sist five-day span of my whole entire life. This was December 1998. I was a junior in college and a lowly intern.

at a Cleveland Alt Weekly, for whom I reviewed three concerts in five days. Concert number one, big bad voodoo daddy, the swing band, swing revival band from swingers. The movie, people danced, swing danced, I did not dance, I was a professional. Concert number two, Seven Dust and Godsmack, a pretty rad new metal double bill. If we're honest, Seven Dust were quite drunk and jovial. Godsmack, who were not quite yet multi-platinum stars, were of course named after an Allison Chain song about heroin. I understand that's redundant.

But Godsmack, the Allison Chain Song is like extra about heroin. People moshed. I did not mosh. I was a professional. Had I not been a lowly intern, I might have gotten to cover the bigger show in Cleveland that night. Aerosmith with Seven Mary three opening. A bitter disappointment.

at the time. To miss that one, probably dodged a bullet. Concert number three, a bizarre all-day alt-rock radio station festival and canned food drive co-headlined by the ska punk band Less Than Jake and the New Radicals. Somebody should probably do a 20,000-word long read on Less Than Jake. I can't guarantee you it won't be me. Less than Jake are lifers. They have my enduring respect. They were ska-punk way before Scott punk was cool and also long after. They tour to this day,

pandemic willing. Less than Jake fans love less than Jake. Also, anecdotally, less than Jake fans hate the new radicals. What we knew that about the new radicals, basically it's what we know now. They were from L.A. And were led by singer-songwriter,

only guy on the album cover, multi-instrumentalist, charming narcissist, and bucket hat enthusiast Greg Alexander. or two G's. At the end of Greg, that's a warning sign. You get what you give, an upbeat piano jam like Billy Joel in a good mood for once,

and the nominal band's one and only hit was still climbing the charts at this point. In the unlikely events that you get what you give is not already stuck in your head. Let's just get this over with. In Cleveland, the new radicals take the stage first. Among the more cynical among us, already there's a sense that they are destined to be one-hit wonders. Actually, for a long time, I thought they were English. They are not.

Greg is from Gross Point, Michigan. He was raised a Jehovah's Witness. He used to drive around with his mom listening to Motown. He heard Princes the Beautiful Ones as a teenager and resolved to runaway to California and become a rock star. And then he did. But I don't know. He looked at me like he smelled like fish and chips.

Maybe it was the bucket hat. He looks a little like Carl Pilkington from the Ricky Jervais extended universe. You can picture him dancing to Depeche Mode in front of the Mayan Pyramid at Chichenica. Anyway, Greg and the new radicals are going for it. In this moment, in terms of chasing pop stardom, for what would turn out to be a remarkably brief period of time. Going for it here to find as willing to play a canned food drive in Cleveland a week before Christmas. Greg does not seem happy to be there in Cleveland a week before Christmas. as I wrote at the time, quote,

confusion reigned from the get-go, as frontman Greg Alexander appeared deeply influenced by some sort of powerful narcotic. He mumbled incoherently, danced like an extra in fear and loathing in Las Vegas, and broke into a cringe-inducing freestyle rap that made the bare-naked ladies sound like the Wu-Tang, end quote,

forgive me. I was not yet the master. Ward Smith that stands before you today. The crowd is indifferent. Halfway through the set, the band pulls out, you get what you give. The crowd perks up. The new radicals proceed to play

other far less popular new radical songs. The crowd once again grows indifferent. The set ends, blessedly, no encore is requested, and yet the new radicals return for an encore anyway. The encore consists of you get what you give again. At this point, a disgruntled crowd member

yells out, somebody find a power outlet. It wasn't me. I was a professional. And then I watch as a sizable group of less than Jake fans huddled together in the middle of the crowd, stand silently with their middle fingers raised toward the stage for the entirety of you get what you give again. Not a great time to be surrounded by canned food. This is my enduring image of you get what you give by the new radicals, or at least it was until the very last time I saw the new radicals play You Get What You Give on stage, which was in mid-January, 2021, as part of Joe Biden's virtual presidential inauguration. Wow. Wow. Emergency episode. Like you, perhaps, there I was on Sunday evening, minding my own business, which is to say mindlessly scrolling Twitter, and there

it was via Rolling Stone. The new radicals will reunite for the first time in 22 years to perform you get what you give for something called a virtual parade event to celebrate the inauguration on Wednesday, January 20th, 2021 of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The new radicals imploded pretty quietly as implosions go in 1999, basically while you get what you give was still on the charts. So first thing I do, tweet a joke about Joe Biden kicking Marilyn Manson's ass in. Second thing I do, tweet about the less than Jake thing. I said in the tweet that the new radicals played, you get what you give three times at that show. I regret the error. It was only twice that when my defense, you get what you give twice basically feels like any other

song three times. Third thing I do, ruminate privately for once on how random. and absurd and openly dystopian this all feels, this pairing of song and political event. Hopefully not like you. I react like the doom-scrolling cynic. I have become universal health care. Wake up, kids. We got the dreamers disease. Student loan debt relief.

So polite. We're busy. Still saying, please. At least I didn't tweet a new centrist's joke. With this Biden thing, some cynicism is warning. American politics and American pop music are forever shouting past each other. On the right, you get several generations now of Republican superstars too busy to Google the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's born in the USA. On the left, you get maximum cringe situations like Pete Buttigieg staffers going viral while dancing to panic at the disco.

Or, you know, I suppose I could just say the words fight song. and then run into the sea. However, and this is going to hurt a little, but I ought to quickly puncture some of the WTFness of this particular song choice. The new radicals are a part of the Biden-Harris inauguration spectacular for two reasons. Reason number one, Kamala Harris' husband, Doug M. Hoff, used you get what you give as his personal walk-on music during the 2020 presidential campaign. I was not aware that all the spouses of presidential or vice presidential candidates have personalized walk-on songs, this is not my area of expertise. Reason number two is that according to Joe Biden's 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad,

you get what you give, was adopted as something of a theme song by his son, Bo Biden, during Bo's battle with cancer. They'd play it over breakfast. Bo died in 2015. Joe quotes these lines from the song's bridge in his son's honor. So that is brutal. Just really. unspeakably brutal. But what you can say about you get what you give is that I can somehow bear the weight of that brutality and also bear the weight of the absurdity of this moment as well, the Madlib's trending topic, anarchy of this whole era. This song means nothing and also means everything. I have to say I find any details about this song's construction, the new radicals

biography, Greg Alexander's early years in LA bouncing between label deals. I find the backstory here to be abnormally unsatisfying. Even when it's funny, Greg's first two solo albums were named Michigan Rain and In Toxic Fornication, respectively. It's not that I don't care. It's that I reject the notion that this song wasn't just a giant cosmic anomaly, a meteor that hit the earth, a meteor wearing a bucket hat. The new radicals were nominally a band. The new radicals were nominally a band. at least live, but there's Greg and only Greg wearing the hat on the cover of their 1998 debut and farewell album, Maybe You've been brainwashed too. And that title gives you some idea of how chaotic and pompous and ideologically convoluted this subversive major label pop record gets.

It sounds like a bright-eyed and white kid from the Detroit suburbs who's still obsessed with Motown, but it's also lurid as all hell, just comically. excessively lurid. Many 590s pop songs are probably about cocaine, but new radical songs about cocaine are like extra about cocaine. That's from a Sex and Drugs Travelog called I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the Ending, Multiple Deaths, Very Tarantino. I don't think that's how big in Japan works, but then again, I don't have a sex tape.

Third Eyeblind, semi-charmed Life, a huge hit in 1997 is a reference point here, I suppose. maximum dorky pop plus maximum drug binge shock value. Greg Alexander somehow always seemed both more and far less professional. Sometimes by design he sounds like a warbling, incoherently mumbling, hot mess, and sometimes he sounds like a Craven LA Studio Pro with a surprisingly affecting falsetto who's just going for it, with a truly frightening focus and intensity at all times. His big weepy power ballad is called Someday We'll Know. I refuse to look this up, but I just know in my heart this song has soundtracked an extra weepy moment and a Scrubs episode.

JD got dumped again. Get a load of this line reading. It's a good question. A profound question. Take a minute to compose yourselves. Half of me wants to sell you on the whole of maybe you've been brainwashed to as this underrated sloppy masterpiece. There's another power ballad called I Don't Want to Die Anymore. more, and if Scrubs didn't use that one, too, they really should have. But the other half of me

knows that only you get what you give matters. The rest of the album seems to be aware that only you get what you give matters. Greg Alexander co-wrote, You Get What You Give with Rick Knowles, who worked with Celine Dion and Madonna and Adel and Alana Del Ray. He's in the songwriter Hall of Fame. He's as industry pro as it gets. One entirely sincere point that I want to make here is that the pre-chorus Do you get what you give is immaculate? It is in the pre-chorus Hall of Fame. It is like a jumbo jet full of cocaine exploding into the sun. And then there is the matter of the outro.

Greg would later clarify that the outro is a social experiment. The first half of the outro is political and earnest and deep, man. Health insurance rip-off lying is, maybe not the most elegant way to put it, but it sure as hell beats Pete Buttigieg. The second half of the outro is celebrity trash talk. The social experiment was to see if everyone ignored the trenchant political commentary and just fixated on the trash talk, which of course is what happened. Greg would later admit that he was disillusioned by this, that we as a society chose tabloid intrigue over the issues. He did not actually want to kick the Hanson brothers asses in. Hansen Manson Manson's

ass in is in the rhyming. All of Fame, by the way, it's like the son giving birth to a jumbo jet full of cocaine. This was all just a little test and society failed. And so then Greg disappeared, or at least the new radicals did. They broke up in 1999, ostensibly while promoting their second single, which for the record was Someday We'll Know, and the Captain of the Titanic started crying again, and Greg became himself a shadowy studio pro.

He and Rick Knowles co-wrote the Carlos Santana hit The Game of Love. Shout out, Michelle Branch. He worked with British pop star Sophie Ellis Bexter and the Irish boy band Boyzone, and Enrique Iglesias. He also co-wrote a song with Hansen, which was

a nice gesture, I thought. In 2013, he was even nominated for an Oscar for the song Lost Stars from the Kira Knightley Mark Ruffalo drama Begin Again. Greg even did an interview or two, a pop star emerging from his self-imposed exile sort of deal to give quotes like, for artists, the dream is to touch people with your art. Now it seems like artists are props for selfies. Sure. Then he disappeared again until Joe Biden got elected president.

The last time I saw the new radicals perform You Get What You Give on stage was 10 minutes ago during the Biden-Harris administration's virtual parade across America. It was anticlimactic. Not radical in any sense. You could say that we got what we gave. I will take Greg's word for it that his fellow musicians on this anonymous soundstage were, in fact, also

former members of the new radicals. Everybody looked 22 years older, but not a girl. aggressively so. Greg did wear the hat, which I appreciate. What I do not appreciate is that the song was heavily truncated and he did not do the outro. No talk of health insurance of the FDA of cloning while we're multiplying. Narian ass was kicked in. I don't care if it's really will kick your asses. I've heard it as ass in for 22 years and I'm not going to stop now. They even cut out the part in the first verse about smashing a Mercedes-Benz. every night, a grave disappointment. A huge missed opportunity. Now is the time for unity, I suppose. I've had you get what you give stuck in my head

for the past 72 hours, and I'm still not mad about it, and this is as nice a thing as I can say about any song by anyone ever. I do think that the term one-hit wonder, in addition to being derisive, does not account for whether the artist in question even tried to have a second hit. I don't think this was the takeaway,

Joe Biden meant for us today, but the new radicals get points for not trying. That is restraint. That is dedication. Dedication to what I couldn't say. All I know is that you get what you give is a song about not knowing how to feel and also feeling every possible human emotion simultaneously. And it gets a rise out of you and that if nothing else, it gets you to raise your hands or your fists or your lighter or your middle fingers. I very much hope to see Greg Alexander in person again one day, even if he is once again antagonizing all the less than Jake fans around me. For today, at least, that hope is enough of a reason to live. My guest today is best-selling author in a long time Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield. Rob, thank you so much for being here.

And congratulations to Rolling Stone for breaking this, the biggest music industry story of the decade, I think, the new radicals. Possibly the only music story of the decade to bring the future of democracy together with the new radicals. Yes. Bucket hats have never been more resonant than in 2021. One of the many unexpected headlines of this year. What is the story with that hat, actually? That's the one thing you know about this guy.

Your only visual cue to this band is the guy's hat. Is there like a philosophical explanation that he ever offered? One of the many mysteries we will get to about the unique. Unique and bizarre story of this song. The bucket hat is definitely chief among them. Yes. Well, let's not get too fancy here. Why is you get what you give the greatest song ever written?

What accounts for its superiority to all other songs? A song that was so completely out of time in 1998, a song that sounded like nothing else at the time. And a song that has journeyed through time has never for a moment ceased to be popular, has never left the airwaves, never a song you're surprised to hear in the wild, and always a song that makes the surroundings better. You're always in a mood to hear it. Nobody goes for their bathroom break at the karaoke place when they do this song. In case you have a short memory, karaoke places were very popular in the pre-pandemic era.

Google them. They were a big deal. I should have known that this was a big karaoke song for you. Is this in your repertoire? This is in every repertoire. This is one of those ones. It's almost like the, I don't know, with the non-evil twin. It's like the non-evil twin version of the Four Non-Blon song that I love, but a lot of people hate. No, I get it. You're always hearing from the other karaoke rooms in whatever bar you're doing karaoke.

Yeah. Yeah, you walk to the bathroom and it's just coming out of every other door that you pass. Those two songs are always being sung somewhere in the karaoke bar. In 1998, did you immediately know that you? you get what you give would have this longevity like this is an instant classic or did it sort of grow into that status for you no definitely knew it was an instant classic everything about it was so unbelievably weird so out of place i mean just to start at the beginning the completely ironic mind-blowingly awesome one two one two three four intro like the idea of a utterly completely

sincere mega pompous one, two, three, four intro. Correction, one, two, one, two, three. There it is. There is. Let's be thorough. It was so beautiful. I mean, that just really like set up the whole over-the-topness of the song. Nothing else sounded like it. It was this weird

blast of mid-80s production, a very specific late 85-86 kind of, you know, rock production. Very much hollow notes, circa, big bam boom. And nothing sounded like that in 1998.

And for Rolling Stone, you did a huge list of the best songs of 98, and you get what you give was number 10, I believe. It was like one slot higher than still not a player. I was wondering, first of all, if Joe Biden might convince you to bump up the new radicals into like the top five, maybe. It's a thing where, you know, every song from 1998, just a very weird year. As you know, doing this podcast of all the 90s years, 1998 is perhaps the 90sist year just by being So isolated from the others, you know, like a song that sounds very 1994. You can think of lots of songs that are emblematically 1994 or emblematically 1992. But 1998 was just every trend was sort of throwing up the weirdest sort of left field experimental ideas.

And so everything from 1998 sounded like it only could have been 1998. Is there any reason for that, like any sort of industry situation that makes it like that? Or is it just random that it's an anomaly? There's probably like a lot of different types of industry analysis that we could do. Definitely like a time for one hit wonders, definitely like a year for last minute scams. Definitely songs for things that have been like kicking around for a few years without taking off. 1998 is when they took off. And so lots of songs that were huge in 1998, you know, have stayed huge and have stayed classics.

But they're very emblematic of that really strange. isolated weird time in 90s history specifically. But the new radicals, the fact that it's an inauguration song, it's just kind of beautiful. Yeah, what do you make of the fact of this song coming back at this moment in world history? Like, is this a good sign or a bad sign? I think it's unquestionably a good sign. I love that Biden is demonstrating from the start that he's making a place for new radicals in his administration. Yes, yes.

I think that's a touching sign in itself, but also not a song that anybody thought of as a band. It was a classic one-hit wonder song, a song that was very much presented as a one-hit wonder. Definitely like a song that was clearly presented from the start as, here we are, we're putting all our crazy ideas in one song. It would have been definitely the kind of song where it would have been disappointing if they had a second song in them. I was going to ask, my crackpot theory is that it's so much more effective as a one-hit wonder. And if, like, the new radicals had put out five more albums and, like, tried to top it, like, we would think less of the genuine, the original in retrospect. Like, it's just so perfect that they vanished on purpose, like, almost immediately after this song came out. Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing about this song is that they, you know, they really wanted to do, like, the ultimate one hit wonder song where there was no rise, no fall.

just, you know, this one, this one perfectly realized song. I remember listening to their album all the way through, which I know I did at least twice. Sure. And feeling this strange but undeniable sense of relief that there weren't any other good songs on it or even acceptable songs on it. It's like it would have been disappointing. Like, I don't know what your personal feelings about right-said Fred are. I remember the second time I heard a right-said Fred song and liked it. I was almost disappointed.

Oh, gosh. Don't Talk Just Kiss, which is, you know, a very good second tier, right-sad Fred song. But I remember thinking, ah, darn, you know, like, because I'm so sexy would have been just a perfect one-hit wonder song. And it became something different that they had other songs that were lesser rights-ed Fred songs. But I remember listening to the new radical CD, maybe you've been brainwashed to. Oh, yes, good title. Yes, lots of really clever song titles on that album. Jehovah gave this jam to you.

That's right, yes. And the fact that absolutely none of them. were attached to half decent songs, there was this kind of relief, you know, this real sense of joy that they understood their mission as a one-hit wonder kind of group. You're not a someday will-know guy

is what I'm taking from this. That one holds up for me a little bit. You're like a power. You're making a face. You're making a really scrunched-up kind of face right now, so maybe not. Okay. I think I was comparable to White Town, your woman, and I remember listening to the White Town album

and definitely having fingers crossed of like God, I hope the rest of these songs completely suck, and we never hear any of them, because your woman is such a perfect one-hit wonder song. And I definitely felt the same glow going through the new radical song. I love, Rob, that you have a pet deep cut from the new radicalology. Well, yeah, it's always been a profound question to me. Like, did the captain of the Titanic cry? You know, like, that's actually a really good question when you think about it, you know, for exactly 10 seconds. yeah. Well, I don't want to pop your bubble about your second favorite new radical song,

but I'm pretty sure this is the one that they're going to do tomorrow. Yeah, I'm not holding out at home. I don't think there's going to be arguing about the set list. Yeah, Joe is not one for deep cuts. It's so funny, I had forgotten about don't touch, just kiss until you said those words, like a thunderbolts hit me. And like I remembered the song in full. I could not have named another right-said Fred song. And then you reminded me of the No, no, it's great. I'm going to have it in my head all day. It's fantastic. Your favorite song of 98 was Flagpole Sita, I believe, which also would have been a rad song for Biden's inauguration. I was wondering if that one still holds up for you. Oh, good God, yes. All these

songs still hold up for me. It was murder trying to limit the hits of 1998, especially also because some of them are permanent hits that stay around forever, like, you know, like Flagpole Sita or like torn or like, are you that somebody? Or you get what you give. You know, a lot of these songs are permanent songs. Then another song that, you know, completely disappeared. Like one of my very favorites for 1998, I think it was number two on this list, right behind Harvey Danger's flagpole said it was Nicole's Make It Hot, which is a perfect Missy Elliott

and Timbaland song. Yes. Absolutely nobody cares about that song. Nobody remembers that song. It kind of disappeared into, you know, because, And Nancy and Tim have so many classic songs, and that became sort of a sleeper in their catalog. But that was a huge hit at the time. And that's a song that really sums up that year for me and a lot of positive ways.

Yeah. I think a lot about the line, one dance left in the chorus. Do you get what you give? Like, it's almost an ad lib. Like, I think about how simultaneously poignant and super corny that image is, like, how desperate it is. Like, can you think of any other song that's this ridiculous but also this, like, earnest? It's such a perfect way. of putting it, and that they make it a prom song as well as this. It's basically a song about

feeling every human feeling at the same time, from rage about health insurance to, you know, here we are at the prom and there's one dance left. And again, the holl and oatesness of it. I mean, that comparison is so specific. And also, this is a time where holl and oats were very much slept on culturally. It was a time when America had not yet arrived at its full two-arm embrace of hollow-oats the way we have. It was a time where they had stopped being hit in makers. And in fact, they had a great

small hit in 1998. A promise ain't enough, which is also on my 98 songs in 1998 list. I think it's a fantastic hollow-and-oat song, but nobody wanted to know about actual hollow-in-outs in 1998. You had to be this band that were basically

putting Fugazi-style lyrics in a hollow-o-o-style 80s prom bombast confection in order to get the holl and oatesness across and there's something beautiful about that and also the fact of this guy uttering beat down threats against Beck Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson. Marilyn Manson, yes. Can only pray that they show up for the inauguration. It's not going to be the same about it. That would be fantastic. Finally joining hands on stage, reuniting America. That's what we need. That era of hollowed

is great, biff, bamboom, method of modern love. That's one of my favorite. Yeah, that's a great song. Out of touch. Fantastic. And, you know, the very underrated late 80s album, Ooh, yeah, with everything your heart desires and missed opportunity. But the late 90s were a time when HoloN Oates' influence was everywhere, but HoloNotes themselves were in a strange sort of cultural void,

even though they were making fantastic music at the time. And so this song, it's always great to hear it as sort of a stealth HoloNote song. It's incredible to me, like you say, that he actually mentions health insurance in this song and that he complained in interviews that everyone ignored that and focused on Beck and Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson. Like, how ahead of its time was this song exactly, like as a political statement? Absolutely. Well, and also, you know, the fact that the program advanced by the new radicals, maybe not the most coherent policy-wise, but full of rage and buzzwords that people could latch on to fashion shoots, you know, very 1998 thing complaining about fashion. shoots. Especially in the context of a video that no way it was recorded for under seven figures. You know, like this fantastic, let's take over a mall. The mall. Let's trash the mall. Let's trash the mall. Trash the mall. And turn it into this youth culture utopia, this

friggin utopia of a new radicals commune. You know, within the context of the mall. Just a beautiful, beautiful video. The way he wore his Mickey Mouse t-shirt inside out, you know, it was like, What a way to flip off the man. There you go. That'll show him. Exactly. Fair use, man. I bought this, but I don't want you to know that I bought this.

It's a big tent as a political platform. Also, beat down threats. Hansen were minors at the time. That it's almost a crime just to say that in a song. Yes. I think Zach was like 12, right? Yeah, yeah. The drummer?

He seemed older than that. Yeah, but yeah, that's a little ill-conceived. None of them were old enough to buy a beer. The kind of thing like, Like, a really dude, like a beat down threat against Hansen? Is it just because it rhymed? I guess probably they're just a victim of, you know, their last name and nothing more. You start from Maryland Manson and you work backward and suddenly you're threatening to beat up minors.

I guess that's how things went in 98. You and I talked once about LFO Summer Girls, you know, and we talked about, like you say, the very specific weirdness of pop in 98 and 99. And like, Lens Steele My Sunshine. Like, is this another hit as a phenomenon that strikes you as super specific to the late 90s? You know, like the, I think of it as like a pre-Napster. You know, you said like the last schemes, like all the last minute schemes. Like, is this just so emblematic of its time that it couldn't have been a hit, you know, in 94 or in 2004? No, in 94 and 2004, the music world, the audience as well as industry, very invested in the idea of career artists.

the idea that you were getting involved. When an artist had a hit song, you like to think that you were getting involved in the ground floor of an artist with a great story. You were investing, yeah. Yes. People put serious time into finding another Blind Melon song to life. I feel like Blind Melon would have gotten their doom more

if they had come out in 1998 when people were definitely not into the idea of career artists the way that they were in 93-94. The artists who had huge hits in 199, 1998, people were content to let that hit be the statement. Nobody was saying, okay, Brand Van 3, 3,000. Let's see if you have another six or seven hits in you. People were like, nope, we're fine.

We're good. We're good. That'll do. A very strange group of people have praised this song, like unprompted. Like, Ice Tea praise this song. The Edge from You Too praised this song. Like, Joni Mitchell has talked up. You get what you give.

Like, unprompted in interviews. Like, is this a song right? songwriter sort of deal? That's very interesting. I wasn't aware that Joni Mitchell loved this song, and I have to say, there's something so perfect about that.

She loved that it came out, and then they disappeared. She likes the recluse aspect. So she's probably super pissed right now, that he's cashing in at Biden's inauguration. She would have preferred that he stay, you know, in the shadows forever. But, you know, she'll get over it, I guess.

Greg Alexander to use the artist's name. Sure. He quickly abandoned the new radicals brand, although we weren't saying brand yet in the 90s. And he became sort of, you know, like ultimate songwriter for hire, ultimate mercenary, hard gun. And even was nominated for an Oscar for a song a few years ago. That's right. Which, you know, really made us all hope for a bucket hat on the red carpet, which sadly did not happen. Right.

And we're back where we started, which is what was with the bucket hat? Do you think it was like a deliberate decision or like he showed up in it one day? He realized it was the only thing anyone was ever going to know about him and now he stuck wearing it for the rest of his life. Maybe. I mean, he had, it was really good at lip syncing. It was the kind of thing. It was like really, his star presence was really clear in that video. Definitely like a very intent blinker.

So something that always strikes about the video is his blinking is really, really intense. He does a lot of blinking, and he always seems really angry when he's blinking. He scrunches up his whole face to blink. I got to watch it again now. His lip-sinking game is really, really tight. He came on like somebody with a lot of star presence, but this song that was a definite outlier, not just for radio in general, but for his career. Yeah.

Rob, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much for talking. Thank you so much. Thanks to our guest, Rob Sheffield. Extra special thanks to our producers, Justin. and sales and Isaac Lee this week for turning this around on very short notice. And as always, thanks to you for listening. And now, at long last, here are the new radicals with You Get What You Give. We'll see you next week.