Gregg Alexander & New Radicals

You may know this intro:

Sure You do. The song ("You Get What You Give") is by a band called New Radicals. They had one hit album - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too. So why bother about a one hit wonder?

Mainly because of the man behind all: Gregg Alexander - an American singer-songwriter.
His first album (Michigan Rain) was recorded in 1989 when he was 18, followed by a second record (Intoxifornication) in 1992. Both records were quite overlooked. Most artists would stop their career after that - for Gregg Alexander something different happened...

... Six years later he created the New Radicals. The band had no permanent member other than himself and Danielle Brisebois.
The album (Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too) and the single (You Get What You Give) where both international smash hits.

But soon he became tired of the musical fame: "Traveling and getting three hours sleep in a different hotel every night to do boring 'hanging and schmoozing' with radio and retail people is definitely not for me", he said - and stopped the project in a moment by emergency braking.

In the following years he had international success by writing plenty of worldwide hit songs for people like

- Santana ("Game Of Love")
- Boyzone
- Ronan Keating ("Life Is a Rollercoaster")
- Sophie-Ellis Bextor ("Murder on the Dancefloor")
- Rod Stewart ("I Can't Deny It")
- Texas ("Inner Smile")
- INXS
- Hanson
- Enrique Iglesias
- Geri Halliwell
- Melanie C
- ex-New Radical Danielle Brisebois

Most of the sons became international hits. The Game Of Love even won a Grammy.

A handful of demos appeared online in the recent years. Some of them are either outtakes from Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too or from the never happened second New Radicals album. Others may be demos for other artists. All of them are sung by Gregg Alexander.

Here's a list of the songs:

- A Love Like That (Outtake from Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too)
- Come Be My Baby
- My Heart Can't Change
- Blown Away
- Speaking My Language
- My One Thing Is Real
- You're Beautiful
- Inner Child (released by Texas)
- The Game Of Love (released by Santana) 

You can listen to all of them on Youtube (or just post a comment with your Email down below).
It's still not clear how they did surface.

After this successful time as a producer Gregg Alexander fell of the face of the earth again and then reappeared in 2014. John Carney (writer, director and musician who is known for the Oscar winning movie Once) called him because he wanted him for the soundtrack of his new movie - Begin Again.
Everything just came together and as a result the soundtrack was mainly written by him. Artists like Keira Knightley, Adam Levine and CeeLo Green performed his songs. On the soundtrack you'll also find a group called Cessyl Orchestra - which is no other than Gregg himself (on vocals). I highly recommend the movie and soundtrack (listen to Lost Stars!).

In October 2014 he gave his first interview in 15 years (!) to Scott Feinberg - read it at hollywoodreporter.com.

A live video - and even a studio version of "Lost Stars" appeared on youtube:

 

In 2017 "Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too" finally got a vinyl release.

After that Gregg Alexander disappeared again - but I'm sure it was not the last time we will hear from him.