Randy Newman

Randy Newman distinguished himself from other singer-songwriters active in the early 1970s. Although Bob Dylan exerted a modest pull on his approach, Newman's sound drew far more heavily from New Orleans R&B and classic pop traditions than from folk. He cultivated a highly personal manner that moved between expansive, film-like pop and swinging R&B, linked by a sharply intelligent wit. While contemporaries favored confessional material, Newman invented vivid figures and populated an imaginative universe with misfits, outsiders, frauds, and hustlers. He sometimes extended empathy toward these creations, yet he earned fame for caustic satire, most notably through the unexpected 1978 single “Short People” and his send-up of 1980s yuppies in “I Love L.A.” Critics consistently championed his releases, above all 1972’s Sail Away and 1974’s Good Old Boys. Commercial success arrived with 1977’s Little Criminals, yet Newman ultimately built substantial wealth scoring motion pictures such as Ragtime and The Natural. After supplying music for numerous Pixar and Disney animated hits, among them the Toy Story and Monsters Inc. series, his own recordings grew rarer; still, 2008’s Harps and Angels and 2017’s Dark Matter confirmed that his singular melodic gift for barbed lyricism remained undiminished.

Born into a family steeped in music—his uncles Alfred and Lionel both enjoyed distinguished careers as film composers—Randy Newman turned professional songwriter at seventeen for a California publishing firm. He began studies toward a B.A. in music at UCLA but left when his friend Lenny Waronker secured him a contract with Reprise Records. His self-titled debut attracted scant notice after appearing in 1968, though his standing as a songwriter rose steadily as Judy Collins, Dusty Springfield, and Peggy Lee cut his compositions. Three Dog Night propelled “Mama Told Me Not to Come” to the top of the charts in 1970, the same year Harry Nilsson devoted an entire album, Nilsson Sings Newman, to Randy’s material.

Newman’s follow-up, 1970’s 12 Songs, earned widespread critical acclaim yet sold poorly. The live set issued in 1971 followed the identical pattern, but 1972’s Sail Away achieved modest commercial traction thanks to favorable notices and relentless touring. Good Old Boys arrived in 1974, an ambitious concept album centered on the South that stirred controversy around “Rednecks,” whose ironic tone many listeners failed to grasp. That track foreshadowed the 1977 single “Short People,” a straightforward satire of prejudice drawn from Little Criminals. Although the song’s ironic intent lay close to the surface, it provoked widespread offense, and the resulting uproar carried the single to number two. Newman backed the album with his first tour since 1974.

Born Again surfaced in 1979 and drew divided notices. Two years later Newman launched a parallel career as a film composer. His initial score accompanied Milos Forman’s Ragtime and brought two Academy Award nominations. Trouble in Paradise appeared in 1983 to strong reviews and yielded “I Love L.A.,” a parody of shallow yuppie attitudes that was widely misinterpreted and adopted as an anthem of 1980s excess. Another studio album did not appear until 1988’s Land of Dreams, which included Newman’s first forays into autobiographical writing. As with most of his work, critics greeted the record warmly even as sales remained modest; “It’s Money That Matters,” essentially a reworking of “I Love L.A.,” nevertheless became a minor hit.

Throughout the 1990s Newman concentrated on film scores and a musical treatment of the Dr. Faust legend. The project, titled Faust, first emerged as a concept album in autumn 1995 and met with mixed reactions. A theatrical staging opened the same month and fared better with reviewers. In 1996 Newman received another Oscar nomination for “You’ve Got a Friend,” featured in Disney’s computer-animated Toy Story. His catalog received a retrospective tribute in 1998 with the four-disc box set Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman.

Early in 1999 Newman parted ways with longtime label Reprise. He joined DreamWorks and issued Bad Love that summer, his first collection of new songs since Land of Dreams. Subsequent film assignments again placed solo work on hold. In 2003 he moved to the artist-oriented Nonesuch imprint and released The Randy Newman Songbook, presenting fresh solo-piano-and-vocal versions of signature material. A second Songbook volume followed in 2011 and Vol. 3 in 2016. Harps and Angels arrived in 2008, revisiting the personal-songwriting stance first explored on Land of Dreams. During 2009 and 2010 Newman devoted himself to screen music, scoring The Princess and the Frog and Toy Story 3; both earned Oscar and Grammy nominations, with Toy Story 3 securing wins. He returned to Pixar in 2017 for Cars 3 and, later the same year, issued Dark Matter, a sharp and frequently topical collection marking his first album of original songs in nine years. Film scoring remained his primary occupation, and 2019 brought the soundtrack to Marriage Story, the comedy-drama starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. Newman also composed for Toy Story 4, receiving his twenty-third Grammy nomination for the song “The Ballad of the Lonesome Cowboy.”