New Radicals

Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too arrived in 1998, with Alexander and collaborator Danielle Brisebois at the centre of the project. “You Get What You Give” supplied the defining introduction. Its piano-led momentum, falsetto lift and generous chorus made it sound immediately familiar, though the verses and closing rush were far less contented than the surface suggested. Celebration and irritation were working through the same arrangement.

The record drew on a broad pop vocabulary without settling into a tidy revival. Soulful phrasing, guitar rock and elaborate keyboard parts could all meet inside a song. Alexander’s performance helped keep the mixture together. He often sounded as though he had more to say than the bar would comfortably hold, which gave the polished production a useful sense of urgency and human impatience.

“Someday We’ll Know” offers another way into the music. Its questions and accumulating details create a more intimate kind of unease, while “Mother We Just Can’t Get Enough” pushes the restless energy towards a larger, almost unruly arrangement. Hearing those songs beside the famous single makes the album less like an isolated pop event and more like a particular songwriter’s crowded emotional world.

The original run ended in 1999, and Alexander’s later work as a writer and producer continued outside the usual frontman role. The brief life of New Radicals should not make the album seem unfinished. It holds a convincing range of moods within its own boundaries: defiance, tenderness, doubt and the wish that a song might offer some temporary escape. Its durability comes from the friction between those feelings, rather than optimism alone.