It’s Friday, so here’s the video for “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

Lock up your adults and get ready to fly, you guys, because today’s video is a classic late-nineties anthem that’s bound to take you back to a simpler time. A time of youth, innocence, promise, and endearingly catchy hit singles released by bands that nobody ever really heard from again.

Believe it or not, the song even generated some controversy at the time. Not because the video rivaled Empire Records in its unrepentant display of meaningful teenage hi-jinx, but because of the closing lyrics of the song itself. Frontman Gregg Alexander maintains that he wrote those lines as a test; he wanted to see if the media would focus on the social issues he clumsily alluded to in the first half, or the bratty round of celebrity dissing in the second. Sure enough, they went with the latter. Alexander has since worked with Hanson, and reportedly apologized to Beck.

Personally, I always thought that section was just obnoxious. Hell, the entire video is embarrassingly cheesy. No wonder it’s so difficult, to this day, for so many people to admit that this is a terrific, perfect pop song.

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