Rednecks, Russians and Randy Newman(Human Pursuits 6/3/22)
On the sardonic brilliance of the Disney-approved songsmith’s overlooked back catalogue.
VANCOUVER — I’ve inherited a lot of good stuff from my dad over the years. High cheek-bones. An appreciation for fine soup. The way my shoulders shake when I laugh. But this week he really out did himself. Without even trying, he turned me onto one of the more woefully underrated singer-songwriters of the past 100 years. The man. The myth. The legend. Randy mother fucking Newman.
“The Toy Story guy?”
The very same.
Shocking as it may be to those of us born after 1990, Mr. Newman was a successful solo artist long before Big Mouse corporation tapped him to write theme songs. More shocking still is how different his early work sounds. On the surface songs like “Louisiana 1927,” my dad’s favourite Newman chune, share an obvious sonic similarity with his biggest hit, “You’ve Got a Friend In Me”. Sweet-as-molasses vocals, southern fried chord progressions, Mardis Gras horns mingle with the orchestra pit. And yet there’s a side to Randy Newman I’m not sure millennials are aware of. A side that is sarcastic and literary and even controversial. His commercial breakthrough, Good Old Boys (1974), which includes “Louisiana,” and which I listened to for the first time this week, is a concept album that dissects Southern bigotry through a series of character studies. It’s opening track, “Rednecks,” features Mr. Newman saying the “n”-word eight times. Not exactly rated G for general audiences.
To say “Rednecks” feels shocking in 2022 is something of an understatement. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Newman producing such a song, or record, in the current age. Which is sort of a shame, because he somehow manages to stick the landing. As Pitchfork’s Winston Cook-Wilson wrote a while back “Newman’s narrators are the ones in his crosshairs; their unworthy targets are never dragged down with them — never roped into the songs’ action to ossify into caricatures and become punchlines.” In “Rednecks,” this infrared precision results in lines like “We are rednecks, we’re rednecks/We don’t know our ass/From a hole in the ground.” Subtle? No. And yet (!) it feels subversive. (Editor’s note: Winston’s review offers a much better summary of both the album and Newman’s career; you really should read it).
At the time of Good Old Boys release, people still listened to records from front to back. Songs existed within the context of the LP, allowing artists to take bigger swings. Newman does just that, with songs like “Birmingham” “Guilty” and “Rollin’” helping to clarify his artistic statement. That nobody has tried to cancel Newman yet, to level his past against him, to me, reflects his late career Disney-fication, which, intentionally or not, repositioned him as a one-hit wonder. To the new generation he isn’t Faulkner or Twain with a pop twist. He’s foul mouthed Bob Saget playing Danny Tanner, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” only more sentimental. In the same way Disney uses secret theme park colours like Go-Away Green or Blending Blue to obscure its own buildings, Newman’s ties to Big Mouse have allowed Good Old Boys to hide in plain sight.
A few seconds into the record, I knew it was for me. I was less certain, however, if it would be for anyone else. It was Tuesday and a light PNW mist lingered in the air. I was walking back from the gym. Above the treadmills, black televisions had flashed the latest visuals from the invasion of Ukraine. Grainy, late night explosions dissolved into crowds of migrants lined up at nearby borders. I wondered whether anyone could give a shit about Randy motherfucking Newman, if writing about a record like this would end up doing more harm than good.
But on Friday I found myself down a YouTube wormhole. Old Fall Out Boy concert footage led to old Kanye West concert footage which somehow led to me to Randy Newman’s Tiny Desk Concert. Sitting alone in a short sleeved, navy blue button up, with slightly lighter navy palm trees printed on it, the silver haired Newman stares at the piano and sombrely starts to play. “Putin putting his pants on,” he sings “One leg at a time…” What follows is a three minute exploration of the Russian president’s psyche, the sort of prescience that apparently only Randy Newman can conjure.
A lot of life’s little pleasures feel pointless at the moment. In that moment, Randy Newman felt anything but. Thanks Tom.
Comments, criticisms, collaborations? Email me at ethan@humanpursuits.org, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
