A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

September 20, 2024

Singer/songwriter Randy Newman is an anomaly among his pop-rock peerage, music journalist Hilburn (Paul Simon: The Life) attests in this authorized biography. Not viewing himself as the romantic, Newman skirted the straight-ahead, creating an acclaimed career writing as a character, not a confessor. The same can be said for this biography. Hilburn successfully chronicles a reluctant interviewee with a private lifestyle who can be at once revealing but not too revealing. Hilburn adores his subject, bolstering scholarship with other authorized interviews, gradually revealing an artist who may ultimately prefer that his art speak for itself. Less effective is when Hilburn tries to connect Newman to contemporary events, producing some text that is timely but not necessarily timeless. Nevertheless, the highlights are when someone, especially Newman himself, exposes a moment or insight that, like the composer's best songs, becomes revelatory. The results reward the reader who pays as much attention to what is being said as what is being unsaid. VERDICT A laudatory biography that is a must-read for any fan of Randy Newman, popular culture, and the creative process.--Gregory Stall

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Starred review from October 15, 2024
As a songwriter, Randy Newman's range is wide and eclectic, from the politically incorrect and surprising hit, "Short People," to Toy Story's amiable "You've Got a Friend in Me." Biographer and music critic Hilburn (Paul Simon, 2018), who had full access to Newman, people close to him, and his archives, asserts that the multitalented, Academy Award-winning artist uses a blend of intellectualism and political liberalism mixed with satire and irony while combining the craft of George Gershwin and Cole Porter and the social commentary of Bob Dylan. He doesn't write love songs; instead, he composes songs about "things that need to be noticed, places like ghettos and slums that should shame everyone."" Newman has addressed racism ("Rednecks"), urban decline ("Baltimore"), the Great Mississippi Flood ("Louisiana 1927"), and slavery ("Sail Away"). He has an impressive pedigree: his uncles wrote hundreds of Hollywood musical scores. In this account of a long and fruitful life, Hilburn documents Newman's eye problems (strabismus), which led, Hilburn surmises, to his empathy for underdogs; his early songwriting years, which included the Three Dog Night hit, "Mama Told Me Not to Come"; his mainstream success; and his film soundtracks (Avalon, Cars, The Natural, Ragtime) up to the present. All in all, an illuminating and masterful achievement.

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November 11, 2024
Biographer Hilburn (Paul Simon) serves up an affectionate tribute to Randy Newman, the singer-songwriter and film score composer best known for “I Love L.A.” and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” Born in 1943 into a musical family (uncles Alfred, Lionel, and Emil composed scores for Hollywood films), Newman developed an early love for classical piano. He shifted his focus to pop music as a teen before becoming a professional songwriter as a young adult. Capturing the full sweep of Newman’s career, Hilburn examines how his self-conscious wit and predilection for character-driven storytelling, combined with his “Jewish intellectualism, political liberalism and a healthy dose of contrarianism,” resulted in lyrics that critiqued the moral state of American society. For example, 1983’s “Song for the Dead,” which is narrated by an American soldier stationed in Southeast Asia who must bury his dead comrades, interrogates the sacrifices made to support the Vietnam War. Throughout, Hilburn astutely analyzes how Newman uses literary devices like the unreliable narrator to probe the absurdities of “a strange and tragic period in history.” In the process, Hilburn makes clear, Newman broadened the boundaries of what pop music can do. The result is an intimately detailed portrait of a vital American songwriter.

January 1, 2025
Singing the praises of a great satirist. Randy Newman is most famous for his perkyToy Story tune "You've Got a Friend in Me," which captures all of his melodic skill but little of his gift for lyrical subtlety. He achieved critical acclaim, and a few moments of pop chart success, years earlier with spikier tunes about sex, bigotry, and greed. Listeners didn't always get his jokes--"Short People" wasn't a critique of the height-challenged, and "I Love L.A." wasn't a valentine to the city. But he persisted, and formerLos Angeles Times pop music critic Hilburn (Paul Simon: The Life, 2018, etc.) dutifully chronicles Newman's musical story, from his childhood in a storied family (three of his uncles were acclaimed film composers), to songwriting wunderkind (Harry Nilsson recorded a whole album of Newman songs well before he became a star), to his film soundtrack work (for which he's received 22 Oscar nods, winning twice), and his yearslong effort to mount a musical based on the Faust story. Yet he's also professed profound insecurity across his career. Hilburn had ample access to Newman, his family, and musical collaborators. But the book mainly chronicles Newman's work and chart performance, giving his motivations short shrift. How did a well-off Jewish Angeleno understand poor Southerners so well? What gave this insecure man the courage to perpetually provoke, even outrage, his audiences? Divorce and a period of drug addiction are skated over. Though Hilburn describes Newman's career comprehensively, it doesn't quite capture a man in full. An ambitious if sometimes shallow exploration of one of pop's undisputed geniuses.

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