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RANDY NEWMAN
(1968)
Key Tracks: "I Think It's Going To Rain Today,"
"Cowboy"
Quick Take: Randy Newman emerged in the late '60s
as the slyest, meanest, and funniest of the post-Dylan
singer/songwriters. His music was steeped in old-time Tin Pan Alley
piano; his sardonic lyrics inhabited sleazy characters from the B
side of Nixon's America, hustlers and racists and glad-handers and
backslappers. His self-titled debut album stunned musicians, who
rushed out to cover its songs, and confused consumers, who rushed
out to not buy it — a commercial slump that has lasted his
whole career. Despite some Allen Sherman moments, Randy
Newman had brilliant songwriting and orchestrations,
especially the lonely piano ballad "I Think It's Going to Rain
Today," recorded by everyone from Dusty Springfield and Neil
Diamond to UB40 and Nina Simone.
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12 SONGS
(1970)
Key Tracks: "Let's Burn Down the Cornfield," "Have
You Seen My Baby?"
Quick Take: 12 Songs is where Newman got
loose as a rock & roller, ditching the complex orchestrations
for a bluesy, easy-swinging satire of America as a land of lonely
gas-station attendants ("If You Need Oil"), desperate cuckolds
("Have You Seen My Baby?"), psychopaths ("Suzanne"), cranks ("Uncle
Bob's Midnight Blues"), and bigots (a twisted cover of the '30s
chestnut "Underneath the Harlem Moon"). The only folks on the album
who escape the alienation long enough to have fun are in "Let's
Burn Down the Cornfield," the tale of two sexy young pyromaniacs in
love.
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RANDY NEWMAN LIVE
(1971)
Key Tracks: "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)," "Lonely
At the Top"
Quick Take: Randy Newman Live was a
concert quickie featuring a boffo version of "Lonely at the Top,"
originally written for Frank Sinatra, who wouldn't touch it. The
performances are fine, but the between song banter Newman offers up
is priceless, as he tells stories about the songs and goes off on
tangents like a cross between a friendly bluesman and a drunken
cabaret pianist.
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SAIL AWAY
(1972)
Key Tracks: "Dayton, Ohio - 1903," "You Can Leave
Your Hat On"
Quick Take: Sail Away hit even harder
than 12 Songs in the painfully beautiful title hymn, a
slave-ship captain's invitation to the New World, where "you'll
just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day." Very much a product
of the New Hollywood of the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls era,
Sail Away is Newman's broadest American portrait,
especially the cold-blooded "Old Man," the nostalgic "Dayton, Ohio
- 1903," the blasphemous "God's Song" and the romantic "You Can
Leave Your Hat On."
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GOOD OLD BOYS
(1974)
Key Tracks: "Louisiana 1927," "Every Man a
King"
Quick Take: Good Old Boys went all out
for a concept album about the South, the home of "College men from
LSU/Went in dumb, come out dumb too/Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in the
alligator shoe/Getting drunk every weekend at the barbecue."
Miraculously, Newman failed to get beaten within an inch of his
life by angry Lynyrd Skynyrd roadies, but his musical and vocal
warmth add a crucial touch of compassion to the album, particularly
when he cuts back on the irony for ballads like "Rollin'" and
"Louisiana 1927." (And the joke was ultimately on Newman: In the
'90s, ex-Klansman politician David Duke used "Louisiana 1927" in
campaign ads).
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LITTLE CRIMINALS
(1977)
Key Tracks: "Short People," "Baltimore"
Quick Take: Newman got to feel up the radio for a
few weeks in early 1978, when the catchy New Orleans piano shuffle
"Short People" briefly became a novelty hit. Little
Criminals was a bore, though the lyric to "You Can't Fool the
Fat Man" sums up his worldview if anything does.
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BORN AGAIN
(1979)
Key Tracks: "It's Money That I Love,"
"Spies"
Quick Take: Born Again went for nasty
laughs, peaking with the hysterical "It's Money That I Love" and
the achingly sad "Ghosts." But by now, Newman was getting serious
about movie soundtracks and paying less mind to the record
business. His work got spottier, stranding occasionally great songs
in appallingly overproduced cheese.
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE
(1983)
Key Tracks: "I Love L.A.," "Mikey's"
Quick Take: Trouble in Paradise perks up
whenever Newman busts out his favorite comic persona, the egomaniac
Hollywood sleaze pimp who slobbers his way through "My Life Is
Good," "There's a Party at My House" and his signature hit, "I Love
L.A." ("Look at these women! Ain't nothin' like 'em,
nowhere!").
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LAND OF DREAMS
(1988)
Key Tracks: "New Orleans Wins the War," "Falling
in Love"
Quick Take: Land of Dreams opens with two
killer autobiographical songs about his New Orleans childhood,
"Dixie Flyer" and "New Orleans Wins the War." It would have been
great to hear him follow this theme further — although the
blatantly fake "Falling in Love" was charming as well.
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RANDY NEWMAN'S FAUST
(1995)
Key Tracks: "Gainesville," "I Gotta Be Your
Man"
Quick Take: Newman's musical version of
Faust, featuring guest vocals from Bonnie Raitt, James
Taylor, Don Henley, and Linda Ronstadt, would have been a fine idea
if he'd written a half-decent song or two. The narrative is a mess
and the tunes are weak, and the album lacks a lot of the teeth of
Newman's best work.
Randy Newman's Faust (Reprise)
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TOY STORY
(1995)
Key Tracks: "You've Got a Friend in Me," "Strange
Things"
Quick Take: As his movie-soundtrack career took
off, Newman became a weird Hollywood star: nominated for countless
Oscars, famous enough to play the ceremony every year, but not
famous enough to win. Newman obviously got a perverse kick out of
composing for stomach-turning treacle -- pick a Top 10 of the
schlockiest movies you've ever seen, and the odds are that Randy
worked on at least three of them. The Toy Story soundtrack
has just enough charm to make it into Newman's essential works, and
"You've Got a Friend in Me" belongs on any Newman greatest hits
compilation.
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BAD LOVE
(1999)
Key Tracks: "Shame," "The World Isn't Fair"
Quick Take: it took Bill Clinton — a Newman
character if ever there was one — to put the bite back in
Newman's music. On Bad Love, his most inspired album since
Good Old Boys, Newman sang "My Country" and "The World
Isn't Fair" with a nasty rock & roll twitch that had seemed
lost to him years ago. "Shame" was the most hilarious vocal
performance on an album full of them; muttering "You know, I have a
Lexus now" in a haze of heavy-breathing lust and piano boogie, the
Randy Newman of Bad Love was the real pig in the
city.
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MONSTERS, INC.
(2001)
Key Track: "If I Didn't Have You"
Quick Take: In 2002, after a record-tying 15
losing nominations, Randy Newman finally won his first Oscar, for a
Monsters, Inc. throwaway that was forgotten before Randy
even finished his acceptance speech. You can't fool the fat man.
Though "If I Didn't Have You" is weak, the rest of the score has a
lively, energetic, old Hollywood feel that mixes his Tin Pan Alley
urges with his dirty New Orleans jazz roots.
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HARPS AND ANGELS
(2008)
Key Tracks: "A Few Words in Defense of Our
Country," "A Piece of the Pie"
Quick Take: Newman triumphantly returned to
politically charged songs on Harps and Angels, channeling
his bitter bile into pointed barbs at likely targets. The set's
keystone is "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," released on
iTunes in 2007. A state-of-the-union ballad that cops musical DNA
from "America the Beautiful," its press-secretary punch lines about
how the Bush administration ain't so bad compared with Stalin are
Colbert Report-hilarious. But its eulogy for American
empire and a people "adrift in the land of the brave and the home
of the free" is profoundly sad.