My second selection from Randy Newman’s Bad Love is a cousin to the song I featured yesterday. Again, Newman is singing about his own dumb luck, this time as tongue-in-cheek political commentary.
Newman starts off talking (and yes, he increasingly spends talks more than sings many of his songs) about Karl Marx, the “public-spirited boy” who imagined a world in which “no one could rise too high” and “no one could sink too low.” But as proof that such an idealistic worldview isn’t realistic, Newman provides Marx with a glimpse of his own blessed life.
If “froggish men” like him can land pretty wives, how can anybody expect social and economic equality?
He finishes powerfully, saying “I’m glad I’m livin’ in the land of the free, where the rich just get richer and the poor you don’t ever have to see.”
He took a hard look around
He saw people were starving all over the place
While others were painting the town
A public-spirited boy
Became a public-spirited man
So he worked very hard and he read everything
Until he came up with a plan
There’d be no exploitation
Of worker or his kin
No discrimination
‘Cause the color of your skin
No more private property
It would not be allowed
No one could rise too high
No one could sink too low
Or go under completely like some we all know
If Marx were living today he’d be rolling around in his grave
And if I had him here on my mansion on the hill
I’d tell him a story that would give his old heart a chill
It’s something that happened to me
I’d say Karl I recently stumbled
Into a new family
Two little children in school
Where all little children should be
I went to the orientation
All the young mommies were there
Karl you never have seen such a glorious sight
As these beautiful women arrayed for the night
Just like countesses, empresses, movie stars, and queens
They’d come there with men much like me
Froggish men, unpleasant to see
Were you to kiss one, Karl,
Nary a prince would there be
Oh Karl, the world isn’t fair
It isn’t and never will be
They tried out your plan
It brought misery instead
If you’d seen how they worked it
You’d be glad you were dead
Just like I’m glad I’m livin’ in the land of the free
Where the rich just get richer and the poor you don’t ever have to see
It would depress us, Karl,
Because we care
That the world
Still isn’t
Fair.
Meet Me In Montauk 
Great song from what I still maintain may be my favorite Newman album.
This is Newman at his most brilliant.
He exposes so many of our faults in this little ditty. Who is spared? When he assures Marx, “If you’d seen how they worked it/ You’d be glad you were dead,” he certainly isn’t letting the socialist off the hook.
However, I think he saves his most biting observations for all of us; this isn’t political commentary as much as it is social commentary:
The poor can get rich if they’re beautiful women, for rich, froggish men are shallow.
The rich, froggish men can marry beautiful women, because beautiful women value money and things over true love.
The irony is his best songs is so think and so widespread that everyone winds up targeted by it. And THAT is when I love Newman the most 🙂
I have a different interpretation. I think he’s pointing out “hot wife inequality” and how no one seems to address that problem because we all instinctively understand the world isn’t fair and yet that common sense understanding goes out the window in politics.