Randy Newman can probably write songs like this one in his sleep, but that doesn’t stop it from being freaking awesome. It’s amazing how much mileage he can get out of a jaunty New Orleans musical backdrop and some conversational lyrics.
For me, the genius of this song comes right in the first verse, when Newman says/sings “She may be hungry, but she won’t say. You better get a burger or something in her right away. If you don’t, you’re gonna pay.”
My next ‘Piano Man’ is one of the all-time greats… Randy Newman. Newman has had such a long and varied career, alternating between biting satire and Disney movie scores, that it seems silly to pin him down into specific categories.
But that’s not going to stop me.
Newman got his start in the Brill Building tradition, writing elegant, soaring pop ballads for the likes of Dusty Springfield and Peggy Lee.
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.
Five years after Trouble in Paradise, Randy Newman released 1988’s Land of Dreams, another album I inexplicably don’t own. That one wasn’t as universally acclaimed as his 70s work but I’m sure it’s worth a listen. And following Land of Dreams, Newman went silent.
Well, maybe that’s not the way to put it. The man wrote scores and songs for 12 feature films over the next 11 years, including his celebrated work on The Natural, Avalon and the first two Toy Story films. But he didn’t record another album of his own songs until 1999, when he released Bad Love.
And now for something completely different. I’ll back off the country for a bit here and turn my attention to a New Orleans jazz man… the fabulous Randy Newman.
Any legitimate list of great songwriters would have to have Randy Newman right up near the top not only for his excellence but for his versatility. This is a man who has written chart-topping pop songs for Dusty Springfield and Three Dog Night, music both fun and touching for children’s movies from Toy Story to The Princess and the Frog, biting satire about religion and politics and incredibly heartfelt love songs. Most songwriters would kill to be able to do just one of those things well.
Meet Me In Montauk 