Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Studio album by New Radicals
Released	20 October 1998
Recorded	"all over the place and on Christmas day in Italy."[1]
Genre	Rock
Length	54:21
Label	MCA Records
Producer(s)	Gregg Alexander
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (A-) link City Pages (Favorable) link Entertainment Weekly (A-) link NME (6/10) link Rolling Stone link

Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too is the only album by the New Radicals, released in late 1998 by MCA Records. Two singles were released off it in 1999, "You Get What You Give" and "Someday We'll Know".

The album reached #41 on the Billboard 200 and achieved Platinum status (1,000,000 copies sold) on October 14, 1999 in the United States. On the UK Albums Chart, the album reached as high as #10.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Critical reception 3 Songs 4 Track listing 5 Credits 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Overview

The New Radicals' lead singer, Gregg Alexander, released two albums, Michigan Rain (1989) and Intoxifornication (1992), before signing with MCA Records in 1997 and allegedly receiving an $600,000 advance for Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too.^[2] While the album was credited to New Radicals, many critics considered it more of a Gregg Alexander album,^[3] as he wrote and produced all songs (only the first two singles were co-written with other artists), played several instruments on it and is basically the only constant member of the band (save the possible exception of Danielle Brisebois).

[edit] Critical reception

The sound of Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too has often been compared to a wide range of atypical influences for a modern pop-rock album, such as Todd Rundgren, World Party, Hall & Oates and the early work of Prince and Mick Jagger from The Rolling Stones.^{[citation needed]} And while even unfavorable critics had to admit that—musically—the album, with its upbeat pop-rock and influences of funk and soul, was a "well-crafted project"^[4] and one of "the more promising releases of late 1998",^[5] the album's lyrics, with Alexander complaining about the commercialisation of Western society, media and religion, divided critics. Some deemed these attacks "shallow posturing" and "empty social pronouncements"^[6] while others found Alexander's social criticism and observations "would sound clichéd if they werent so insightful and articulated with such uninhibited truth."^[7]

However, while some songs highly criticize American society, politics and corporations, most mass media attention the album gained was not focused on the social and political comments, but on a line from the album's first single "You Get What You Give", dissing Beck, Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson, calling them "fakes" and threatening to "kick [their] ass". Alexander later explained in an interview on MuchMusic that these lines, along with the ones preceding it ("Health insurance rip off lying/ FDA big bankers buying/ Fake computer crashes dining/ Cloning while they're multiplying") were an experiment to see if the media would focus on the real issues, or on the celebrity diss.

Apart from the obligatory love songs ("Someday We'll Know", "Crying Like A Church On Monday") another theme throughout the album is an "apparent anti-anti-drug stance".^[3] This, along with heavy reference to sex in songs like "I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away The Ending" ("She licked rock cocaine suckers, laughed, said her mom's doing mine [...] I told her dealer I was broke, he hired a cameraman/ We did a porno film for coke, I hear I'm big in Japan ") and the use of swearwords was not well received by some critics.^[8]

[edit] Songs

See also "You Get What You Give", "Someday We'll Know, and "Mother We Just Can't Get Enough"

"Mother We Just Can't Get Enough" the album's opening track, is sunny, uptempo and musically similarly styled to the New Radicals' debut single "You Get What You Give". It was intended as the third single – copies of both a promotional one-track and a 4-track single were even pressed – but never saw proper release. The lyrics deal with the ecstatic feeling at the beginning of a relationship. "Mother We Just Can't Get Enough" was featured in the TV show Scrubs and appeared on the soundtrack to A Walk to Remember. Certain unsung lyrics from this song in the booklet later turned up in "A Love Like That".

The second song on the album, "You Get What You Give", was the first single released from the album. It reached #36 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on the UK Singles Chart and gained a lot of media attention due to the celebrity-dissing closing lyrics.

"I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the Ending" is amongst the more personal and disturbing moments of Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too. The track opens with two minutes of multi-layered gasping, pleading and howling vocals by Alexander that gradually build in complexity against a steady piano chord sequence. Alexander eventually tells himself to "Shut up!", and the main body of the song begins. It is a bleak tale of a relationship caught up in desperation and drug addiction. Exploits that Alexander details in the song include making a pornographic film to pay for cocaine (which subsequently becomes successful in Japan), putting that same cocaine in a can, and watching as his partner's father mistakenly consumes it in his tea, mistaking the powdery white substance for sugar. His partner is momentarily upset, but then decides to steal her father's wallet and sell all his donatable body parts so that she can buy more cocaine. In the resulting confusion at the hospital, he is blamed for the father's death. "I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away The Ending" was often performed as the closer in New Radicals live performances.

"I Don't Wanna Die Anymore" deals with an inner emotional conflict surrounding a relationship's breakup. Alexander sings "I won't live a lie anymore, I need to give you up", torn between his commitment to his partner and a desire to move on to a more hopeful lifestyle. It is generally amongst the least acclaimed songs on the album. Some fans have also speculated that "I Don't Wanna Die Anymore" was considered as a single, as a couple of websites selling the album (MSN Music for example^[9]) list the track as "I Don't Wanna Die Anymore (Album Version)". Also, certain copies of the album came with a promotional sticker reading "Containing the songs You Get What You Give, Someday We'll Know and I Don't Wanna Die Anymore", suggesting that it would join the other two as a single release.

In the upbeat "Jehovah Made This Whole Joint for You" Alexander sings about attempting to convince a gothic girl named Carolina (voiced by Danielle Brisebois) that life is worth living, questioning the value of her cynical attitude towards life. Carolina also appears to be an anarchist, who believes that "we don't need politicians, they breed mistrust", and a hypocritical environmentalist ("she screams, "Let's start thinkin' about the ozone layer", while tossing out a styrofoam cup"). The song also speaks to the fact that, ironically, social groups dedicated to non-conformity can frustratingly become a conformity of their own; Carolina is "pissed at all the other non-conformists who listen to the same obscure bands". In the chorus, Alexander appeals to her that it's "wonderful to be alive" amongst God's creation for mankind. His use of the word Jehovah is semi-sarcastic, as Alexander was strictly raised a Jehovah's Witness and later rebelled against the faith. (He once claimed that "I've tried most drugs, most positions, under the guise of most religions with most genders on most continents whilst on a speakerphone with my mom and dad listening intently".)

"Someday We'll Know" is a midtempo love ballad and the second single from the album. The lyrics compare timeless rhetorical questions to the nature of love.

"Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too", the album's title track, is the subject of much controversy and discussion. There is a complete discrepancy between the lyrics printed in the album booklet and that sung on the actual recording. The lyrics in the booklet contain an absolute tyrade against corporate Western society, covering everything from corrupt health insurance and credit card interest rates to racism in professional sports and genetic engineering of food. Meanwhile, the actual song is a dark, strange piece with seemingly unintelligible lyrics that may have been competely ad-libbed. Some of these have been interpreted as "I come pickin' my fight, back just around you, yeah/I come, don't matter why, yeah... You're set for doing my new dance/The baboon, the baboon, the baboon, yeah". The printed lyrics end with the line "So cynical, so hip, so full of shit,/ they told us to shut the fuck up and write another hit", which led fans to believe that the original track was cut from the album due to disapproval from executives at MCA Records, so Alexander cynically knocked up a weird, highly uncommercial piece to replace it. Some also believe that backmasking has been used to hide messages in the track.

In "In Need of a Miracle", Alexander sings about his worldwide romantic exploits and his newfound desire to settle down with the discovery of his latest partner, who has apparently provided the "miracle" of comfort and emotional fulfillment he was seeking.

"Gotta Stay High" is a tragic song seemingly about a man holding back a relationship due to dependence on drug addiction. Alexander's partner is attempting to reach out to him as a lover, emotions for which he cannot handle and continues to fall back on marijuana to relieve the pain. "Too deep in love, there were no words to say/Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just had to get high", sings Alexander. But it would seem that all is not lost, as there is "something about you pushin' me, pullin' me and saying 'Don't go away..". The haunting track concludes with a beautiful demonstration of Alexander's falsetto.

"Technicolor Lover" is an odd song, and the most aurally resembling of Alexander's earlier solo albums. The song is often accused of immaturity because of the line "She said, where'd you get that velvet-coloured hair/I said, I got lots more somewhere, if you touch my big...". Some interpret the song as about an LSD induced hallucination.

"Flowers" is amongst the most underrated songs on Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too, a favourite amongst fans and oft-overlooked by casual listeners due to its position on the album tracklisting. The song is in some ways a reverse of the situation presented in "Gotta Stay High". He speaks to a lover who is over-dependent on marijuana and lacking direction in life, assuring her (him?) that "our love is real, as real as the flowers you smoke to get high... as real as our God, who has spoken on how we should fly". He is perhaps playing on the term "high" with this line, suggesting that the natural highs of love will "fly" them higher than any drug.

"Crying Like a Church on Monday" is the album finale, a ballad comparing Alexander's feelings of loneliness to that of a church on a Monday, having just experienced the attention of Sunday mass the previous day. It is worth noting that according to the booklet, although it is not sung, the concluding line of the album is "There ain't no use in trying to stop me.".

[edit] Track listing

1. "Mother We Just Can't Get Enough" (Gregg Alexander) – 5:46
2. "You Get What You Give" (Alexander, Richard Knowels) – 5:02
3. "I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away The Ending" (Alexander) – 6:37
4. "I Don't Wanna Die Anymore" (Alexander) – 4:16
5. "Jehovah Made This Whole Joint For You" (Alexander) – 4:11
6. "Someday We'll Know" (Alexander, Danielle Brisebois, Debra Holland) – 3:39
7. "Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too" (Alexander) – 5:21
8. "In Need Of A Miracle" (Alexander) – 3:43
9. "Gotta Stay High" (Alexander) – 3:06
10. "Technicolor Lover" (Alexander) – 3:42
11. "Flowers" (Alexander) – 3:52
12. "Crying Like A Church On Monday" (Alexander) – 5:02

The Japanese release of the album, ブレインウォッシュ (Romaji: Bureinwosshu, or "Brainwash"), featured an additional track, "To Think I Thought", that also appeared as a B-side on the "You Get What You Give" single.

[edit] Credits

• Allessandro Allessandroni – strings
• Gregg Alexander – vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, synthesizer, drums, bass
• Rusty Anderson – guitar
• Tal Bergman – drums
• Danielle Brisebois – background vocals, piano
• Paul Bushnell – bass
• Lenny Castro – percussion
• Paolo Degregorio – synthesizer, quitar
• Gary Fergusson – drums
• Josh Freese – drums
• Paul Gordon – piano
• Michael James – electric guitar
• Stuart Johnson – drums
• Mitch Kaplan – piano
• Matt Laug – drums
• Lance Morrison – bass
• Rick Nowels (listed as Richard Knowels) – piano
• Phil Parlapiano – organ
• Greg Phillinganes – piano
• John Pierce – bass
• Richie Podler – percussion
• Juliet Prater – percussion
• Dan Rothchild – bass

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• MaybeYou've Been Brainwashed lyrics at unofficial New Radicals forum
• NewRadicals.Us. The unofficial NR forum covering New Radicals, Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois.