A Very Belated 80th Birthday Salute to Randy Newman
There’s never a wrong time to honor the king of pop satire
When Rolling Stone ranked the 100 greatest songwriters of all time, Randy Newman didn’t even make the top 20.
That just feels wrong.
Newman, who turned 80 on November 28, 2023, has enjoyed astonishing success in a songwriting career that began when he was just 17 years old. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (he was inducted in 2013) and Songwriters Hall of Famer (he was inducted in 2002) has won seven Grammys, three Emmys and two Oscars (out of 22 nominations).
So how do we best celebrate such a career? We’ll get to that in a moment.
First, consider all those accolades – and now consider that since his eponymous debut in 1968, he’s never had a number-one hit. I know, right? You’d have thought “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” from the Toy Story franchise would have crushed the charts (hey, it did peak at #40 on the Canadian RPM Adult Contemporary chart).
Well, actually, that’s not exactly right: “Mama Told Me Not To Come,” written for Eric Burdon’s 1966 solo album, topped the Billboard chart when it was recorded by Three Dog Night in 1970. You can find Newman’s version on 12 Songs, his second solo album, also released in 1970.
VIDEO: Randy Newman “Short People”
But the closest he got to number one while recording his own stuff? The 1977 Little Criminals album spawned the number-two charting, “Short People,” the official video of which finds Randy giving the finger before launching into the tune that was misunderstood by the same nimrods who later thought Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” was a patriotic anthem. Newman caught a lot of grief over the song, many radio stations refused to play it, and Maryland State Delegate Isaiah Dixon tried to introduce a law to ban its playing on the radio until the Maryland Attorney General told him that would be a First Amendment violation.
You might have thought “I Love L.A.” from 1983’s Trouble in Paradise, was a big hit, too. Nope. And while it’s a terrific video that got a lot of MTV exposure for one of Newman’s most upbeat, anthemic tunes, it, too, is misunderstood. Look at that bum over there (he’s down on his knees) and listen closer: He’s satirizing L.A. stereotypes, people.
VIDEO: Randy Newman “I Love L.A.”
Which, when you put Newman’s formidable film and television music career aside and focus on his studio albums, is what he does best. Satire. Irony. Wit. Absurdity. Ambitious insight.
Take, for example, the title track from his third album, 1972’s Sail Away. The singer is a slave trader telling the African locals how great a life they’ll have in America: “Ain’t no lions or tigers / Ain’t no mamba snake / Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake / Ev’rybody is as happy as a man can be / Climb aboard, little wog / Sail away with me.”
It’s incredibly powerful in its simplicity and has attracted a number of cover versions. Bobby Darin’s falls pretty flat, as you might expect, but Etta James crushes it, also as you might expect. And it must have been quite the thrill for Newman to hear his songwriting hero Ray Charles take a turn at the tune.
Or take another track from the same album: “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind),” in which the singer is a deity who is both amused and disgusted by his creation: “I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee / From the squalor and the filth and the misery / How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me / That’s why I love mankind.” Etta does a hell of a take on this one, too.
Another one of my favorite Newman songs comes from 1974’s Good Old Boys. “Louisiana 1927” has a cadence similar to “Sail Away” as Newman sings about the great Mississippi flood. The tune took on another powerful level of meaning in 2005 in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
(That album also includes “Rednecks,” a song that, with N-words a-flying, would probably get Newman canceled were it released today. Gotta admit, though, it’s a pretty great tune.)
But lest you believe that Newman’s best work was back in the ‘70s, mosey on over to 2017’s Dark Matter. It kicks off with Randy’s longest song, “The Great Debate,” a smidge over eight minutes that sets scientists against true believers on issues like evolution and global warming. Less a song than a one-act play or a short film, it’s pure Newman and an elaborate centerpiece to an excellent album.
Dark Matter also includes songs about Vladimir Putin (“Putin”), and Sonny Boy Williamson (“Sonny Boy”), but received a lot of ink upon its release for a song Newman left on the shelf that focused on Donald Trump. As he told Vulture:
“The language was too vulgar. It felt too easy. The song was ‘My dick’s bigger than your dick / It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true / My dick’s bigger than your dick / I can prove it too / There it is! There’s my dick / Isn’t that a wonderful sight? / Run to the village, to town, to the countryside / Tell the people what you’ve seen here tonight.’” (Can’t you just hear him sing that?!)
Why didn’t Newman include the song on the album? “I just didn’t want to add to the problem of how ugly the conversation we’re all having is, so I didn’t put it out.”
So, dicks and dark matter aside, let’s get back to that key question: How do we best celebrate such a career as Randy Newman’s?
Dig into the catalog and listen. Closely. Don’t be one of those nimrods: Take the time to consider the words and their implications. Give those 11 studio albums from 1968 to 2017 some time, and you’ll discover all sorts of gems you never knew existed. Because Newman is that good, and being ranked #25 on that Rolling Stone list just doesn’t seem fair.
Or, you know, you could also go watch the Toy Story flicks. There’s that, too.
AUDIO: Randy Newman “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”
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