This is another of my articles for KKBox. I wrote it a year ago, a few weeks after the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. While I've already posted a Randy Newman retrospective on this blog, this article was written from a different angle, so I thought I might as well post it too.
On April 18, eight artists were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, among them the 69-year-old singer-songwriter and critical favorite Randy Newman. Over the last few decades, millions have heard Randy Newman’s music through his soundtracks for numerous movies, including Ragtime, The Natural, Meet the Parents, Seabiscuit, Monsters Inc., Cars, and the three Toy Story films. He has been nominated for twenty Oscars and won twice (as he remarked when receiving his second one, “my percentages aren’t great”). It is no surprise that Newman has become a successful film soundtrack composer, since he had three uncles who were famous film composers, including Alfred Newman, winner of nine Academy Awards. However, it is chiefly for his work as a singer-songwriter and composer for other artists that Newman has been highly praised by numerous critics and artists like Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Peter Gabriel, and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.
Randy Newman recorded his first song in 1962, but it flopped, so he turned to writing songs for others. Several of his songs became hits in the UK for British artists, including “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear” and “Just One Smile”, the former of which was recorded by several artists including Newman himself, and the latter of which was later covered on influential albums by Blood, Sweat and Tears and Dusty Springfield. In 1968, he released his first album. Like most of his later albums, it didn’t sell well but was a critical success. Many of the songs on the album were covered by other artists, particularly “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”, which has been covered more than sixty times. With this and subsequent albums like Sail Away and Good Old Boys, Newman established a reputation for writing songs in a variety of styles that paired attractive melodies with highly ironic lyrics. He usually writes in character, singing from the point of view of losers, misfits, and other slightly unsavory people. The beautiful “Sail Away”, for instance, is written from the point of view of a slave trader recruiting Africans to sail away to slavery in America, and the highly sarcastic “Political Science” is from the perspective of an American who wants to drop nuclear bombs on the rest of the world. One of his most controversial songs was “Rednecks”, a song from the point of view of a Southern racist that mocks Northern hypocrisy. “It’s Money That Matters”, as the title indicates, is from the perspective of someone obsessed with money. Newman’s sole major hit as a performer, “Short People”, also appears on the surface to be making fun of people of short stature. In fact, Newman uses these songs to criticize prejudice and narrow-minded attitudes, but it is perhaps not surprising that some people failed to notice the irony and took the songs at face value. In recent years, Newman’s pop-rock albums have been few and far between, but his most recent album of new songs, 2008’s Harps and Angels, showed that his distinctive brand of sardonic humor and his propensity for tackling controversial topics were still the same as ever.
Newman’s songs have been performed by countless artists, including Dusty Springfield, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Cocker, Art Garfunkel, Ringo Starr, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Barbara Streisand, Michael Bublé, and Korean-Japanese singer Noon, just to name a few. His “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” was a US No. 1 for Three Dog Night and has been covered frequently since. “You Can Leave Your Hat On” was a hit for Joe Cocker and has also been performed by a number of other artists, though many miss the irony in Newman’s original. His “Louisiana 1927”, with the lyric “Louisiana, Louisiana, they’re trying to wash us away”, got frequent airplay in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded the city of New Orleans. The more recent “Feels Like Home” has also been covered numerous times. Several artists, beginning with Harry Nilsson back in 1970, have even recorded entire albums of Newman covers. Nearly all of these other performers are technically speaking much better singers than Newman, but not all of them are able to capture the spirit of the songs the way Newman does himself. But whether one listens to Newman’s own versions or those by other artists, after listening to a sampling of his best work it is soon apparent why some critics regard him as one of America’s greatest living songwriters.
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