Gregg Alexander wasn’t planning to make a splashy return with New Radicals, his pop-rock collective that burned bright and fast in the late 1990s before abruptly disbanding. So it’s fitting that “One Night Only (Break Loose Break Free!),” the group’s first new song in 28 years, arrived last Friday without warning. Its release was so under the radar, in fact, that it was a virtual obstacle course to track down the song on streaming services, unlisted on New Radicals’ own profile pages yet discovered and disseminated far and wide across the media.
“It’s like most things that happen in New Radicals’ world: organically and seemingly out of nowhere,” Alexander tells Variety just days after its release. The jubilant tune, written and recorded as the title track for Will Gluck’s freshly released new rom-com “One Night Only,” picks up right where New Radicals left off, setting jaunty handclaps and candy-sweet melodies against heavier lyrics that question the systems humming just in the background of society. Alexander, who largely stays out of the limelight, met the song’s fervent reaction with typical candor: “Sometimes, you just hop on the roller coaster and go along for the ride.”
For Alexander, that’s been something of a de facto mantra over the past three decades as New Radicals have endured well beyond their heyday. Since releasing their sole album “Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too” in 1998, the set’s lead single “You Only Get What You Give” has become a song of the people, a cross-generational hit that rallies against corporate America with a sentiment that’s trickled down family trees. Last year alone, Geese went viral with a cover of the song on BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge; the MTV Video Music Awards featured a re-recorded version with Benee in a promo; and Journeys reimagined its iconic video set to a cover by Gus Dapperton.
All of this, says Alexander, is partly what’s inspired him to revive New Radicals, a project he dismantled at the peak of its powers after getting a cold, hard look inside the star factory. But mostly, he says, it boils down to New Radicals’ ethos — how a song can potentially change the world. “I am intrigued by the idea of what would happen with a song as good as the best that I could do, if it went out there again,” he says during our three-hour interview. “And I do have some songs, I think, that are in that pantheon and can proudly stand next to ‘You Get What You Give.’ I am a true believer that if it’s meant to be to have a song reach the world the same way, then hopefully it will come to be.” (Watch a teaser for the “One Night Only” video below.)
That’s largely been the driving force behind Alexander bringing back New Radicals, which has been slowly emerging from the shadows over the past few years. (I remind Alexander that when we first spoke in 2018, he said he had “seven to 10” New Radicals albums that he’d potentially release after he dies. He heartily laughs when I refer to the records as a “post-mortem.”)
In the time since, the group has reawakened, however slowly. In 2021, Alexander teamed with band member Danielle Brisebois to perform “You Get What You Give” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, and in 2024, they released New Radicals versions of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” and the Oscar-nominated “Lost Stars,” sung by Maroon 5’s Adam Levine for the 2014 film “Begin Again.” (Alexander wrote both songs, while Brisebois co-wrote the latter.) “Murder on the Dancefloor” had its own recent renaissance after its use in “Saltburn,” while Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” and “Pocketful of Sunshine,” both written by Brisebois, had similar resurgences.
Now, New Radicals have had yet another revival, this time by their own hand. Just last month, they teamed with Michelle Branch to release a rerecording of her 2002 smash with Santana, “The Game of Love,” which Alexander initially wrote before filtering the demo through Tina Turner and Macy Gray. (A video for the duet with Branch is on the way.) And, after releasing “One Night Only,” New Radicals are officially returning to the stage they once shunned with plans to release their sophomore album “Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed TWO (THE Heathen Will ‘Con$pirituality’ TROLL),” which is currently without a release date but in gestation.
“It’s basically where we are right now between organized religion and politics and even social media,” explains Alexander about the record. He says that the “beautiful response” internally they got to “One Night Only” only fanned the flames of wanting to test the waters with more new music. “It seemed like a point of entry in the same way releasing the demo of ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ or ‘Lost Stars’ was a way of just reminding ourselves what we do best, which is really just writing songs and singing. It’s easy to get lost with all of the different distractions about what our purpose is on this earth. It could be caretakers for those we love. It could be if there’s a cause that we believe in. It could be trying to be there as a support system if a friend is going through a depressing time. But at the core of who I am is a singer and a songwriter, and dare I say even occasionally an entertainer. It’s good to remind yourself why you were put on this earth. And I think music was the main reason.”
The announcement comes on the heels of Branch and New Radicals’ “The Game of Love,” originally a hallmark post-millennium tune that hit just a few years after Alexander called it quits on the industry as a front man. At the time, it was a ubiquitous smash, a song that Alexander performed only once after it was awarded song of the year at the 2004 BMI Pop Awards. Decades later, Branch asked Alexander to produce a new version of the track, potentially with Olivia Rodrigo in mind for a duet, before they concluded that his vocal was the right fit. After they cut the song, Alexander was on his way back from Prague to New York City to play it as a surprise for Clive Davis, who was involved in the song’s initial creation, when he learned that the music icon had passed away.
“Very few people lived as fully as Clive did, a family man who traveled everywhere and was a champion of music and artist rights,” says Alexander. “The fact that we got to make this record and now that it’s going out there and getting a special response” — debuting on the Billboard Adult Pop Airplay chart last week — “we’re honored and touched because like anything I do, I always had zero expectations.”
As much as Alexander has steered the New Radicals ship, “You Get What You Give” had also been coopted in ways they’d never imagined. One of the sticking points of their hit was its fast-paced riff against corporate America, bemoaning “big bankers buying” and “computers crashing down and cloning while they’re multiplying.” So it came as a surprise that an AI rendition of the song aired in a dramatic lead-in to the Super Bowl earlier this year, as well as in an AI rip-off that aired during an Olympic figure skater routine in February. Alexander addresses the usage by chalking it up to the indifference at a leadership level, and the impression it leaves on the masses.
“The sad thing is I can’t speak to what will happen to all of people’s jobs being replaced, your voice being replaced, your songs being replaced. I feel like it’s so much bigger than that one usage,” he says. “But I do also feel that people feel disempowered because, do they really want to let their lives become consumed by it, or does somebody want to go just go write a better song? When are we going to wake up as the slow-boiling frog that we are and realize that if we don’t collectively demand that from an ethical and integrity and economic standpoint and in a survivability of our actual species standpoint, if we don’t collectively stand up to that, because it’s in all of our best interests, then we’re all fucked?”
At present, Alexander is focused on the future of New Radicals and making sure music is at the center. He was recently credited as a songwriter on the Strokes’ “Going to Babble On,” included on the group’s new album “Reality Awaits” after he wrote the tune with Julian Casablancas five years ago. He’s planning on rolling out the video for “One Night Only,” a nod to a bygone era before cell phones when you could dance like no one’s watching. Most of all, he says, it’s about making music that resonates, however it may take hold.
“The songs that you think are your best ones are the ones that often people don’t connect with,” he says. “And then something that you write as a throwaway, like ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ or ‘You Get What You Give,’ are the ones that people remember out of my body of work. You have to be humbled by it and go, wow, I have to follow the lead of whatever connects with people. Because once you put a song out into the world or you write a book or you make a film, as soon as it goes out there, it’s really no longer yours. And so you have to just stand by and hopefully be proud of it if it gets a little bit of love from time to time.”