New Radicals Quietly Release First New Song Since 1998

New Radicals have surfaced with an actual new song. “One Night Only (Break Loose Break Free!)” arrived on Friday, marking the first piece of freshly recorded music under that name since the 1998 album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too. Gregg Alexander, who walked away from the project after its one album and a tour with Goo Goo Dolls, has spent the intervening decades as an in-demand writer behind hits for Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Santana and Michelle Branch, and the Oscar-nominated “Lost Stars.”

The new track doesn’t signal a full return to the spotlight. It’s the theme for One Night Only, a romcom starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, set in a world where premarital sex is illegal except one night a year. Alexander wrote and performed it with his longtime creative partner Danielle Brisebois and her husband Nick Lashley. The piano-driven, spoken-word peppered song echoes the band’s old sound without feeling like a forced bid for nostalgia.

The soundtrack also includes King Princess tackling John Paul Young’s “Love Is In The Air,” while Este Haim worked on the score with Christopher Stracey. New Radicals’ quiet return fits Alexander’s pattern—recent years brought his own versions of “Murder On The Dancefloor” and “The Game Of Love”—but the use of the band name stirs a specific set of memories. Their 2021 inauguration performance for Joe Biden, tied to Beau Biden’s connection to “You Get What You Give,” remains the lone live exception to decades of retreat.