New Radicals Freeze My Childhood Mall In Time With ‘You Get What You Give’

The year is 1998 and songwriter Gregg Alexander scores a bonafide Pop gem with his band, New Radicals, & their song ‘You Get What You Give.’ The music video helped propel the success of the song, with its lighthearted takeover of a mall by a bunch of teenagers and dogs.

But that’s not just any mall in their music video. That’s my mall. The Staten Island Mall in Staten Island, New York.

In an extremely rare opportunity, the band and song are almost inessential to my thoughts on this video. Because I’m less interested in how the video was made & what about it relates to the actual song and more interested in the idea of bygone media that captures something precious, almost sacred to us: time.

I can say with confidence that director Evan Bernard did a fine job with ‘You Get What You Give.’ He makes great use of the actual mall setting and uses low & high angled shots in a number of creative ways to capture an accurate sense of chaos.

But, for me, there’s no getting around the fact that every time I watch this video, I’m struck that a piece of my younger self is preserved; on beautiful, clearly shot professional-grade video, no less.

Time is the most finite commodity there is. Even as you are reading this, seconds are going by that are part of a minute, an hour, a day in time that is here and then gone forever. One day we wake up and a local pizzeria we went to for years is now shut down. A childhood movie theater demolished to make way for a gym. So many times in your life, you will lose things that you took for granted would either always be there or that you never thought you would miss at all.

So to have a clear document of a piece of that lost time; preserved, not just as you remember it, but confirming your memories to be accurate? It’s worth more to some of us than you might imagine.

In an era where nostalgia is at a premium, where even a mere mention in a Facebook group of something long gone can flip everyone involved into a frenzy, the fact that pieces of media like ‘You Get What You Give’ exist are like finding diamonds in the rough.

I’m positive this example is not exclusive to just myself. Everyone reading this has something out there they have held onto as a window into their past. Whether it’s a commercial preserved on Youtube, a movie or TV show shot in their town, or photographs in a family album. 

So for all the craftsmanship and technical wizardry involved in making ‘You Get What You Give’ come to life, it’s the joy of knowing there’s a real tangible piece of my younger life, tied to so many casual memories, that exists on film. Readily able to be rewound and called back from the sands of time.

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