Music |
Randy Newman
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Rock
Randy Newman
Videos
Louisiana
Sail Away
Rednecks
Short People
I Love LA
Randy Newman had a long and distinguished career as a singer-songwriter.
He got great reviews and lots of nominations for awards.
Then he started composing soundtracks and writing songs for movies and television.
He got great reviews and lots of nominations for awards.
By 2001, he had set a record — the most Oscar nominations (fifteen) without a single win.
In 2001, he finally received an Oscar (for "If I Didn’t Have You", from Monsters, Inc.).
The opening line of his acceptance speech: "I don’t want your pity…"
That’s Randy Newman: prodigiously talented, horrifyingly self-aware, desperately ironic (if not outright self-hating), and, from the listener’s perspective, obscenely enjoyable or unrelentingly misanthropic.
But then again, what do you expect from a short, semi-stocky, curly-haired, bespectacled Jewish piano player?
Sure, he sings “I love LA” — but do you believe him?
Sure, he says he’s joking when he sings “Short people got no reason to live” — but are you sure?
And here are lyrics from the song he wrote from God’s perspective:
I burn down your cities
how blind you must be
I take from you your children
and you say ‘How blessed are we’
You must all be crazy
to put your faith in me
That’s why I love mankind.
Some God, huh?
Randy Newman songs are tricks. He is a beautiful, lyrical composer (think back to his scores for “Ragtime” and “The Natural”) and as a pianist, his playing is elegantly simple, often heartbreakingly beautiful. But once he opens his mouth…..
It’s not how he sings, though there is ample evidence that he talks more than he croons. (“I don’t think my voice is that hard to take,” he insists.)
It’s the way he writes.
Randy Newman’s stock-in-trade is to assume a persona and then undermine it. He finds the racist inside the liberal, the maniac inside the conservative. Does he mean any of it? It’s so hard to tell.
From a rare online chat:
Question: A lot of your songs are ‘biting,’ to put it mildly. Have you ever felt any difficulty in performing them live in front of a family audience?
Newman: If I see it as sort of a family audience, I won’t do some of the rougher ones. Like ‘Christmas In Capetown,’ or ‘Redneck.’ It doesn’t bother me to adjust. It doesn’t bother me to sell out completely, really.
“It doesn’t bother me to sell out completely, really.” I laughed when I read that. If you do too, greetings — you’re in the club. Because the thing is, Randy Newman is the ultimate curmudgeon; get past the stubble and the frown, and you’re on your way to the sweetest guy in town. Listen to songs like “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” and “Louisiana 1927.” They’re so beautiful you can’t believe they’re by the same guy who says his idea of foreign policy is to “drop the big one.”
“Sail Away” is his single best CD, recorded in 1973 and re-mastered in 2002. As for “The Best of Randy Newman”, it really is.
Once upon a time in Los Angeles, I went out with a woman who was also going out with Randy Newman. Guess whose candidacy faded? But my feelings weren’t hurt. I mean, the other guy was Randy Newman.
To buy “The Best of Randy Newman” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Sail Away” from Amazon.com, click here.
