10 Bands That Fell Apart After One Album
9. Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too - New Radicals
The '90s were really the prime time for the smarmy set of pop music fans. Even if the bubblegum era of music was going to come in with the arrival of the Spice Girls in the late '90s, you also had people capitalizing on the idea of irony, whether that was actual irony or the fake one that Alanis Morissette was talking about. Any one of these slackers may have had the potential to be famous, but Gregg Alexander had grown out of the spotlight buzz pretty quickly.
After going through a period of trying to be a real rock star, Alexander's turn as a bald hipster worked perfectly in New Radicals, having the same amount of hooks with a more disaffected attitude to every one of the songs. As much as Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too is just a straight ahead pop record, it's some of the highest quality that the genre ever spat out that decade, almost being a throwback to the golden age of '70s AM radio rock.
Between songs like You Get What You Give, there are many story songs that go into some very strange directions like I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the Ending or the jilted lover trying to patch things up on Someday We'll Know. Fame comes with commitments though, and Gregg was not looking to be a big rock star, going behind the scenes, becoming a songwriter and ending the New Radicals for good. The spotlight might be attractive, but Gregg seems content to be heard and not seen these days.