Album Review – Sail Away by Randy Newman

Album Title: Sail Away
Artist: Randy Newman
Release Date: May 1972

Side One
Sail Away
Lonely at the Top
He Gives Us All His Love
Last Night I Had a Dream
Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear
Old Man

Side Two
Political Science
Burn On
Memo to My Son
Dayton, Ohio - 1903
You Can Leave Your Hat On
God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

All songs written by Randy Newman

Randy Newman is one of the greatest American songwriters of the last half century, and Sail Away is, in my opinion and that of many others, his best album. One thing that I should acknowledge from the outset is that, like another great American songwriter named Bob Dylan, Randy Newman doesn’t have the most attractive voice out there. Therefore, many listeners may enjoy his songs more when they are sung by others (most of the songs on this album, like many of his other songs, have been covered by other artists). However, there is usually something to be said for hearing songs sung by the person who wrote them, and that is particularly true of Randy Newman’s songs, which are generally full of an irony that others often can’t convey like he can, if they even realize it’s there in the first place.

The ironic nature of Newman’s songs is one of their key features; rarely does a song of his mean exactly what it says. One reason for this is another characteristic feature of his work, namely his use of characters. His songs are generally sung from the viewpoint of some unusual character. These characters are often oddballs, misfits or just seriously flawed. In some cases, Newman is just presenting an interesting character to the listener (in much the same manner that Mark Knopfler, who has stated that Newman inspired him in this regard, tells the tale of a narrow-minded store clerk in Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”). In others, he is using them to make a statement about something, such as bigotry, racism, or greed.

Sail Away not only includes some of Randy Newman’s best songs, including the title track, “Lonely at the Top”, “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear” and “Political Science”, just to name a few, but it also presents them in the most effective way, striking a middle ground between his heavily orchestral debut and the sparse arrangements of 12 Songs. While he has many other songs as brilliant as those here, and many of them receive settings as effective as these (a number of the songs on the latter day album Bad Love, for instance, have especially great arrangements), none of his other albums have quite equaled this one in overall consistency. This album often appears in lists of all-time best albums, and supposedly was a big help to Brian Wilson in the depths of depression in the early 1970s.

Sail Away Song by Song

Sail Away: The title track of Sail Away combines brilliant lyrics and an excellent melody, making one of Randy Newman’s best songs in a career filled with high-quality songwriting. Someone who wasn’t paying enough attention to the lyrics might think it was a patriotic song about immigrating to America, but a closer look reveals that the narrator is a slave “recruiter” coaxing Africans on board to sail to Charleston, where they will be sold. The song positively drips with irony, the best example being where he sings “In America, every man is free…”, bringing to mind the idealistic view of America as the land of the free, only to add after a pause “to take care of his home and his family”, since the slaves of course will not be free – demonstrating the hypocrisy behind the American ideal. This song has been covered numerous times, including versions by artists such as Etta James, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (with backing from Arlo Guthrie), Linda Ronstadt, Bobby Darin and even Ray Charles, but Newman’s own version is as good or better than any of the others that I’ve heard.

Lonely at the Top: Another great set of tongue-in-cheek lyrics combined with a simple yet effective melody, this song, which first appeared the previous year on Randy Newman Live, is another of the album’s standout tracks. Newman says he wrote it with Frank Sinatra in mind, but Sinatra turned it down. He also offered it to Barbara Streisand, who recorded several other Newman songs, but she said (probably correctly) that people would miss the irony and think she really meant it. Several other artists did cover it, including an amusing duet version with altered lyrics by Cher and Carol Burnett.

He Gives Us All His Love: This song, which first appeared in the film Cold Turkey (Newman’s first film work in a career which has seen 20 Academy Award nominations and two wins – as he said on the latter occasion, "my percentages aren't great"), on the surface sounds like a gospel song in praise of God, and in fact has been covered by a number of Christian artists. However, given that Newman’s true view of religion is more accurately indicated by the last song on this album, it is obvious that the song is ironic, particularly with lines like “He hears the babies crying / he sees the old folks dying”.

Last Night I Had a Dreamhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif: Another song that first appeared on Randy Newman Live, this is an odd little track filled with strange imagery – just like many dreams. There’s a psychedelic rock version of the song that only appeared on a promo single (Newman himself called it "one of the worst records ever made", but I think it's actually rather interesting).

Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear: This is one of Randy Newman’s best known songs, having been a big hit for the Alan Price Set back in 1967 and covered by a number of other artists (it was even performed on the Muppet Show by Scooter and – of course – Fozzie the Bear). The jaunty melody conceals the pathos of a song in which the narrator and his bear perform for whatever well-to-do passers-by deign to toss to them.

Old Man: A beautiful melody combined with an excellent but very depressing set of lyrics that certainly don’t make atheism sound very attractive (ironic considering that Newman is an atheist). A great version of this is the wonderfully sung cover by Art Garfunkel from his album Angel Claire.

Political Science: As Randy Newman himself said, this song is as close as he ever got to Tom Lehrer. It’s amazing how apropos these brilliantly sarcastic lyrics sung from the viewpoint of a redneck American nationalist (who wants to “set everybody free” by bombing them into oblivion) seemed during the George W. Bush era 30 years later.

Burn On: In 1969, the badly polluted Cuyahoga River that flows through Cleveland caught fire, inspiring this heavily ironic track that remains among the best of Newman’s many songs about different places in America.

Memo to My Son: A short little song that nevertheless does a great job of portraying the kind of fathers who, as Newman says “can’t get into their kids until the kid can talk.” An especially great bit is where the narrator tells his baby he’ll show him “how smart I am” by repeating overworked sports clichés like “winners never quit”.

Dayton, Ohio – 1903: This song first appeared on the excellent Harry Nilsson album Nilsson Sings Newman. It presents an idyllic – and deliberately clichéd – portrait of turn-of-the-[20th]-century Middle America.

You Can Leave Your Hat On: Another of Newman’s best known – or in this case, notorious – songs, thanks to Joe Cocker’s version (not to mention the Tom Jones version featured in the movie The Full Monty). Of course Newman himself was portraying a somewhat perverted character in his usual ironic fashion.

God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind): The album closer is a much more direct attack on religion than the subtler “He Gives Us All His Love”, and as such evokes a very divided reaction. Some consider it one of the highlights of the album, while many religious listeners were offended by it. My own feelings are more mixed. I don’t have a problem with the message, and some of it is cleverly done, but a few of the lines just don’t work as well for me as most of Newman’s lyrics. But while I wouldn’t consider it one of the best tracks on the album, that’s as much due to the strength of the competition as the minor weaknesses of the song itself. It still makes a good closer to an excellent album.