Randall Stuart “Randy” Newman
(born November 28, 1943) is an American singer/songwriter, [1] arranger, composer, and pianist who is notable for his mordant (and often satirical) pop songs and for his many film scores.
Newman is noted for his practice of writing lyrics from the perspective of a character far removed from Newman's own biography, often using the literary device of an unreliable narrator. For example, the 1972 song "Sail Away" is written as a slave trader's sales pitch to attract slaves, while the narrator of "Political Science" is a U.S. nationalist who complains of worldwide ingratitude toward America and proposes a brutally ironic final solution. One of his biggest hits, "Short People" was written from the perspective of "a lunatic" [2] who hates short people.
Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. His film scores include Ragtime
, Awakenings
, The Natural
, Leatherheads
, James and the Giant Peach
, Meet the Parents
and Seabiscuit
. He has scored five Disney-Pixar films: Toy Story
, A Bug's Life
, Toy Story 2
, Monsters, Inc.
and Cars
, and is set to return for Toy Story 3
and Cars 2
.
He has been singled out for a number of awards by his colleagues, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and the Governor's Award from the Recording Academy. [3] Randy Newman was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002.
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RANDY NEWMAN TICKETS
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Early life
Newman was born in
Los Angeles, California, the son of Adele (
née
Fox), a secretary, and Irving George Newman, an internist.
[4] As an infant, Newman moved with his
Jewish family to
New Orleans, Louisiana, where his mother's family lived. He lived in New Orleans as a small child and spent summers there until he was eleven years old, his family having by then returned to Los Angeles. The paternal side of his family includes three uncles who were noted
Hollywood film-score composers:
Alfred Newman,
Lionel Newman and
Emil Newman. Newman's cousins
Thomas and
David, and nephew
Joey are also composers for motion pictures. He graduated from University High, Los Angeles. Newman attended the
University of California, Los Angeles.
Songwriter
Newman had become a professional songwriter by the time he was seventeen. His first single as a performer was 1961's "Golden Gridiron Boy", released when he was eighteen. However, the single flopped and Newman chose to concentrate on songwriting and arranging for the next several years. His early songs were recorded by
Gene Pitney,
Jerry Butler,
The O'Jays and
Irma Thomas, among others. His work as a songwriter met with particular success in the UK: top 40 UK hits written by Newman included
Cilla Black's "I've Been Wrong Before" (#17, 1965),
Gene Pitney's "Nobody Needs Your Love" (#2, 1966) and "Just One Smile" (#8, 1966); and The Alan Price Set's "
Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear" (#4, 1967). Besides "Simon Smith", Price featured seven Randy Newman songs on his 1967
A Price On His Head
album.
In the mid-1960s, Newman was briefly a member of the band The Tikis, who later became
Harpers Bizarre, best known for their 1967 hit version of the
Paul Simon composition "
The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)." Newman kept a close musical relationship with Harpers Bizarre, offering them some of his own compositions, including "Simon Smith" and "Happyland". The band recorded six Newman compositions during their short initial career (1967-1969).
Recording artist
His 1968 debut album,
Randy Newman
, was a critical success but never dented the
Billboard
Top 200. Many artists, including
Alan Price,
Dave Van Ronk,
Judy Collins,
the Everly Brothers,
Claudine Longet,
Dusty Springfield,
Nina Simone,
Pat Boone and
Peggy Lee,
covered his songs and "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" became an early standard.
In 1970,
Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Newman compositions called
Nilsson Sings Newman.
That album was a success, and it paved the way for Newman's 1970 release,
12 Songs
, which abandoned the elaborate arrangements of his first album for a more stripped-down sound that showcased Newman's piano.
Ry Cooder's slide guitar and contributions from Byrds members Gene Parsons and Clarence White helped to give the album a much rootsier feel.
12 Songs
was also critically acclaimed (6th best album of the seventies according to Rolling Stone critic Robert Christgau), but again found little commercial success, though
Three Dog Night made a huge hit of his "
Mama Told Me Not to Come". The following year,
Randy Newman Live
cemented his cult following and became his first LP to appear in the
Billboard
charts, at #191.
1972's
Sail Away
reached #163 on
Billboard
, with the title track making its way into the repertoire of
Ray Charles and
Linda Ronstadt. "You Can Leave Your Hat On" enigmatically touches on what it is men find important in relationships, and was covered by
Three Dog Night, then
Joe Cocker, and later by
Keb Mo,
Etta James and
Tom Jones (whose version was later used for the final striptease to the 1997 film
The Full Monty
). The album also featured "Burn On", an ode to the infamous incident in which the heavily polluted
Cuyahoga River literally caught fire. In 1989, "Burn On" was used as the opening theme to the film
Major League
, whose focus was the hapless
Cleveland Indians.
His 1974 release
Good Old Boys
was a set of songs about the American South. "
Rednecks" began with a description of segregationist
Lester Maddox pitted against a "smart-ass New York Jew" on a TV show, in a song that seems to criticize both southern racism and the complacent bigotry of American northeasterners who stereotype all southerners as racist yet ignore racism in northern states. This ambiguity was also apparent on "Kingfish" and "
Every Man a King", the former a paean to
Huey Long (the assassinated former
Governor and
United States Senator from
Louisiana), the other a campaign song written by Long himself. An album that received lavish critical praise,
Good Old Boys
also became a commercial breakthrough for Newman, peaking at #36 on Billboard and spending 21 weeks in the Top 200.
Little Criminals
(1977) contained the surprise hit "
Short People", which also became a subject of controversy, as Newman's ironic depiction of bigotry aimed at the short was taken literally by some listeners. Both the album and the single stand as the best-selling of his career. In 1978, legislation was introduced to make playing the song on the radio illegal in Maryland, though the bill failed to pass. Newman often pokes fun at the misinterpretation of his song during concerts, sarcastically announcing, "I hate short people, it's true. The reason I don't say anything is because the record label's afraid I'll tell people what I really think."
1979's
Born Again
was a commentary on the money-worship of the upcoming era of
Reaganomics, which also featured a song satirically mythologizing the
Electric Light Orchestra (and their arranging style) entitled "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band". The album failed to capitalize on the commercial success of "Short People" but did include other noteworthy material, such as "Ghosts", a sorrowful "apology" from a lonely old man, and "Girls In My Life Part One", a dubious catalog of amorous boasts from a naive young man.
His 1983 album
Trouble in Paradise
included the hit single "
I Love L.A.", a song that has been interpreted as both praising and critiquing the city of Los Angeles. This ambivalence is borne out by Newman's own comments on the song. As he explained in a 2001 interview, "There's some kind of ignorance L.A. has that I'm proud of. The open car and the redhead, the Beach Boys...that sounds 'really' good to me." The
ABC network and
Frank Gari Productions transformed "I Love L.A." into a popular 1980s TV promotional campaign, retooling the lyrics and title to "You'll Love It! (on ABC)". This song became very popular at games won by the
Los Angeles Dodgers at
Dodger Stadium. The album also featured "Real Emotional Girl", a disturbingly frank portrait of a relationship, sung from the male point of view, while "Same Girl" told of the love affair between two junkies, and its inevitable and desperate final days.
In the years following
Trouble in Paradise
, Newman focused more on film work, but his personal life entered a difficult period. He split from his wife of nearly twenty years, Roswitha, and was diagnosed with the physically debilitating
Epstein-Barr virus. He has released three albums of new material as a singer-songwriter since that time:
Land of Dreams
(1988),
Bad Love
(1999), and
Harps and Angels
, which was released on August 5, 2008.
Land of Dreams
included one of his most well-known songs, "It's Money That Matters", and featured Newman's first stab at autobiography with "Dixie Flyer" and "Four Eyes", while
Bad Love
included "I Miss You", a moving tribute to his ex-wife. He has also re-recorded a number of his earlier songs, accompanying himself on piano, as
The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1
(2003), and continues to perform his songs before live audiences as a touring concert artist.
In the aftermath of the
Hurricane Katrina catastrophe of 2005, Newman's "
Louisiana 1927" became an anthem and was played heavily on a wide range of American radio and television stations, in both Newman's 1974 original and
Aaron Neville's cover version of the song. The song addresses the deceitful manner in which New Orleans's municipal government managed a flood in 1927, during which, as Newman asserts, "The guys who ran the Mardi Gras, the bosses in New Orleans decided the course of that flood. You know, they cut a hole in the levee and it flooded the cotton fields."
[5]
During a European tour in the summer of 2006, Newman premiered three new songs: "Potholes in Memory Lane", "Losing You", and the politically controversial "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" (all three songs were later recorded for his 2008 album,
Harps and Angels). The latter was released as an MP3 single in February 2007. It compares the United States to previous
empires, criticizes the
War on Terror and the
Supreme Court, and posits that "this empire is ending like all the rest." The song is available through his website .
Film composer
Newman's work as a film composer began in 1971, with his work on the
Norman Lear satire
Cold Turkey
. He returned to film work with 1981's
Ragtime
, for which he was nominated for two
Academy Awards. Newman co-wrote the 1986 film
¡Three Amigos!
with
Steve Martin and
Lorne Michaels, wrote three songs for the film, and provided the voice for the singing bush. His orchestral film scores resembles the work of
Elmer Bernstein (who he worked with on
¡Three Amigos!
).
Newman scored the first four
Disney/
Pixar feature films;
Toy Story
,
A Bug's Life
,
Toy Story 2
, and
Monsters, Inc.
He also scored the 1996 film
James and the Giant Peach
and the 2006 Disney/Pixar film
Cars
. Additional scores by Newman include
Avalon
,
Parenthood
,
Seabiscuit
,
Awakenings
,
The Paper
,
Overboard
,
Meet the Parents
, and its sequel,
Meet the Fockers
. His score for
Pleasantville
was an
Academy Award nominee. He also wrote the songs for Turner's
Cats Don't Dance
.
One of Newman's most iconic and recognizable works is the central theme to
The Natural
, a dramatic and Oscar-nominated score, which was described by at least one complimentary critic
[who?] as "
Coplandesque".
Newman had the dubious distinction of receiving the most
Oscar nominations (fifteen) without a single win. His losing streak was broken when he received the
Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2001, for the
Monsters, Inc.
song "
If I Didn't Have You", beating
Enya and
Paul McCartney. After receiving an enthusiastic standing ovation, a bemused but emotional Newman began with "I don't want your pity!"
Besides writing songs for films, he also writes songs for television series such as the Emmy-Award winning current theme song of
Monk
, "
It's a Jungle out There".
In October 2006 it was revealed that Randy Newman will be writing the music for an upcoming
Walt Disney movie called
The Princess and the Frog
, which is scheduled for release in 2009. During the Walt Disney Company's annual shareholder meeting in March 2007, Randy Newman performed a new song written for the movie. He was accompanied by the
Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
Musical theater
In the 1990s, Newman adapted Goethe's
Faust
into a concept album and musical,
Randy Newman's Faust
. After a 1995 staging at the
La Jolla Playhouse, he retained
David Mamet to help rework the book before its relaunch on the
Chicago Goodman Theatre mainstage in 1996. Newman's
Faust
project had been many years in the making, and it suffered for it; a central joke was Newman's depiction of Faust as a shallow
heavy metal music fan in thrall to Satan, and this had to be modified to accommodate the less-than-devil obsessed age of
grunge rock that was in fashion by 1995.
In 2000,
South Coast Repertory (SCR) produced
The Education of Randy Newman
, a musical theater piece which recreates the life of a songwriter who bears some resemblance to the actual Newman. Set in
New Orleans and
Los Angeles, it was modeled on the celebrated American autobiography,
The Education of Henry Adams
. Newman, together with Jerry Patch and Michael Roth, surveyed Newman's songs to find those which, taken together, depict the life of an American artist in the last half of the 20th century. After its premiere at
SCR, it was reworked with additional songs written specifically for the show by Newman and presented in
Seattle by ACT.
Notable performances and appearances
- In 2000, Randy Newman hosted a PBS special on Sunset Blvd, in his native Los Angeles. Driving a convertible, he followed the road from the Amtrak train station downtown, through Silver Lake, on past his alma mater UCLA, and finished in Santa Monica.
- Randy Newman appeared on The Colbert Report
on October 9, 2006, performing "Political Science" after his interview. At the end of the performance Stephen Colbert said "I hope they're listening in D.C." This appearance came days after North Korea conducted an underground test of a nuclear weapon.
- Randy Newman appeared on the season two finale of the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun
, accompanying the character Harry Solomon's performance of "Life Has Been Good To Me" on piano in a dream sequence.
- Randy Newman appeared as a musical guest during the Keynote Address at MacWorld's 2008 San Francisco MacWorld Expo, performing the songs "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" and "You've Got a Friend In Me".
- Randy Newman appeared as a musical guest on the second episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live
in 1975.
- Had the lyrics to his song "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" published in an op-ed piece in the NY Times on 1/24/2007.
Discography
Albums
- Randy Newman
(1968)
- 12 Songs
(1970)
- Randy Newman Live
(1971)
- Sail Away
(1972)
- Good Old Boys
(1974)
- Little Criminals
(1977)
- Born Again
(1979)
- Trouble in Paradise
(1983)
- Land of Dreams
(1988)
- Bad Love
(1999)
- Harps and Angels
(2008)
Compilations
- Lonely at the Top: The Best of Randy Newman
(1987)
- Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman
(1998) (Box set)
- The Best of Randy Newman
(2001)
- The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1
(2003) (New recordings of previously released songs)
Film Scores
- Performance
(1970)
- Cold Turkey
(1971)
- Ragtime
(1981)
- The Natural
(1984)
- ¡Three Amigos!
(1986) (songs: "The Ballad of the Three Amigos," "My Little Buttercup," and "Blue Shadows")
- Parenthood
(1989)
- Awakenings
(1990)
- Avalon
(1990)
- The Paper
(1994)
- Maverick
(1994)
- Toy Story
(1995)
- James and the Giant Peach
(1996)
- Michael
(1996)
- Cats Don't Dance
(1997)
- A Bug's Life
(1998)
- Babe: Pig in the City
(1998) (song: "That'll Do" by Peter Gabriel)
- Pleasantville
(1998)
- Toy Story 2
(1999)
- Meet the Parents
(2000)
- Monsters, Inc.
(2001)
- Seabiscuit
(2003)
- Meet the Fockers
(2004)
- Cars
(2006)
- Leatherheads
(2008)
- ''The Princess and the Frog (2009)
- Toy Story 3
(2010)
Awards and nominations
- Academy Award
- *2007: Nominee - Original Song - "Our Town" - Cars
- *2002: Winner - Original Song - "If I Didn't Have You" - Monsters, Inc.
- *2002: Nominee - Original Score - Monsters, Inc.
- *2001: Nominee - Original Song - "A Fool In Love" - Meet The Parents
- *2000: Nominee - Original Song - "When She Loved Me" - Toy Story 2
- *1999: Nominee - Original Dramatic Score - Pleasantville
- *1999: Nominee - Original Musical or Comedy Score - A Bug's Life
- *1999: Nominee - Original Song - "That'll Do" - Babe: Pig in the City
- *1997: Nominee - Original Musical or Comedy Score - James and the Giant Peach
- *1996: Nominee - Original Song - "You've Got a Friend in Me" - Toy Story
- *1996: Nominee - Original Musical or Comedy Score - Toy Story
- *1995: Nominee - Original Song - "Make Up Your Mind" - The Paper
- *1991: Nominee - Original Score - Avalon
- *1990: Nominee - Original Song - "I Love to See You Smile" - Parenthood
- *1985: Nominee - Original Score - The Natural
- *1982: Nominee - Original Score - Ragtime
- *1982: Nominee - Original Song - "One More Hour" - Ragtime
- Golden Globe
- *2000: Nominee - Original Song - "When She Loved Me" - Toy Story 2
- *1999: Nominee - Original Score - A Bug's Life
- *1996: Nominee - Original Song - "You've Got a Friend in Me" - Toy Story
- *1991: Nominee - Original Score - Avalon
- *1990: Nominee - Original Song - "I Love to See You Smile" - Parenthood
- *1982: Nominee - Original Song - "One More Hour" - Ragtime
- Grammy
- *2007: Winner - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "Our Town" - Cars
- *2004: Nominee - Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture or Television - Seabiscuit
- *2003: Winner - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "If I Didn't Have You" - Monsters, Inc.
- *2003: Nominee - Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture or Television - Monsters, Inc.
- *2001: Winner - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "When She Loved Me" - Toy Story 2
- *2001: Nominee - Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture or Television - Toy Story 2
- *2000: Winner - Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television - A Bug's Life
- *2000: Nominee - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "The Time Of Your Life" - A Bug's Life
- *1992: Nominee - Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television - Avalon
- *1992: Nominee - Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television - Awakenings
- *1990: Nominee - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - Parenthood
- *1983: Nominee - Score Album for Motion Picture or Television - Ragtime
- Emmy
- *2004: Winner - Main Title Theme Music ("It's a Jungle out There") - Monk
- *1991: Winner - Achievement in Music and Lyrics - Cop Rock
- Annie Award
- *2007: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Cars
- *2003: Nominee - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Monsters, Inc.
- *2000: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Toy Story 2
- *1997: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Cats Don't Dance
- *1996: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Toy Story
- BAFTA Award
- *1983: Nominee - Original Song - "One More Hour" - Ragtime
- Chicago Film Critics Association Award
- *1999: Nominee - Original Score - A Bug's Life
- *1996: Winner - Original Score - Toy Story
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award
- *1981: Winner - Music - Ragtime
- Online Film Critics Society Award
- *1999: Winner - Original Score - Pleasantville
References
- Desert Island Discs featuring Randy Newman
- Randy Newman on Short People
- See his career chronology at randynewman.com
- Randy Newman Biography (1943?-)
- Newman discusses "Louisiana 1927" in a Village Voice interview. [1]