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You Get What You Give

  
1new radicals-you get what you give s 1
  ♫You Get What You Give  
New Radicals

◄  Album : Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too  -  Performed by: New Radicals  ►
  Composed by: Gregg Alexander  -  First heard: Advanced Documentary Filmmaking


“
You want it bad enough to rent me a crane and license an expensive song?
”
Abed negotiating with Jeff for film footage of Chang.


In the study group's fourth year at Greendale, Chang makes an unexpected return to campus in the wake of his hostile take over of the school during the previous semester. Claiming to have amnesia, Dr. Ken Kedan from the Greater Greendale Mental Health Services and Dean Pelton hoped to get grant money to help fund further research into this mysterious condition. Pelton gets Abed to document Chang's ordeal so they can later show the film to the MacGuffin Group, a charitable foundation. However, Jeff is skeptical believing that Chang is faking and planned on using the footage to prove it. In order to secure Abed's cooperation in this investigation he had to agree to pay for a few amenities the school wasn't providing the film crew including the rights to use an expensive song. That song was "You Get What You Give" from the New Radicals. Its first and so far only appearance was in the Season Four episode "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" .


The song with lyrics[]

Lyrics:


Wake up kids
We've got the dreamers disease
Age 14 we got you down on your knees
So polite, you're busy still saying please
Fri -enemies, who when you're down ain't your friend
Every night we smash their Mercedes - Benz
First we run and then we laugh till we cry
But when thenight is falling
And you cannot find the light
If you feel your dream isdying
Hold tight
You've got the music in you
Don't let go
You've gotthe music in you
One dance left
This world is gonna pull through
Don't give up
You've got a reason to live
Can't forget you only get what you give
Four A.M. we ran a miracle mile
Were flat broke but hey we do it in style
The bad rich
God's flying in for your trial
This whole damnworld can fall apart
You'll be ok follow your heart
You're in harmsway
I'm right behind
Now say youre mine
Fly high
What's real can't die
You only get what you give
Just dont be afraid to leave
Health insurance rip off lying FDA big bankers buying
Fake computer crashes dining
Cloning while they're multiplying
Fashion shoots
With Beck and Hanson
Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson
You're all fakes
Run to your mansions
Come around
We'll kick your ass in!
Don't let go
One dance left


Controversy[]

In 1998 when the song was first released, New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander was taken to task for his lyrics involving popular artists at the time Beck, Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson in which he claimed they were all "fakes" and that they would "kick your ass in!". Despite the animosity hinted at towards those acts in the song, Alexander half heartedly responded to the critics in an MTV interview saying he was "a major major major fan of Hanson, Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson" and "wanted to make sure they got as much exposure as possible." He would later further elaborate on the song in another interview saying that he did the lyric as a test. The lyrics before the celebrity shout outs were about health insurance, the FDA, computer crashes, and cloning, all issues that Alexander considered far more important. As he expected, the media and most of the public chose to focus more on the celebrity disses he doled out:


There's this whole hysteria and curiosity over peripheral stupidity instead of focusing on real issues...and a lot of people I talked to asked me about those real things, while a lot of rock media tried to turn it into a cat fight.

After Gregg dissolved the New Radicals in 1999 to focus on production and songwriting work, he later collaborated with Hanson in 2004 on the song "Lost Without Each Other for their sixth album "Underneath".

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