Randy Newman - The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 1

Although he's now best known as the curly haired Prince of Pixar (he's written hit songs for a number of animated blockbusters, including Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life, Randy Newman began his career as a misanthropic satirist and thwarted romantic. It’s this version of Newman who shows up for Songbook Vol. 1, revisiting 18 of his compositions, most written in the '60s or '70s, and all stripped down to just voice and piano. The idea is borrowed from vintage tributes to the masters, the "songbooks" of Jerome Kern or Cole Porter, usually interpreted by a great vocalist such as Ella Fitzgerald. In Newman's case, it's hard to imagine anyone else singing a slave trader's smooth sales pitch ("Sail Away"), a deity's bemused take on mankind ("God's Song"), or a child murderer's creepy meditation ("In Germany Before the War"). Stripped of rock backbeats or orchestral sweetening, Newman's songs reveal their stark beauty and classic craftsmanship even more keenly. What may be most remarkable, however, is how prescient some of the songs seem now ("Lonely at the Top" predates the rise of People magazine and a revolving cast of whining superstars by half-a-decade) and how timely some of its humor is. "Political Science" may have been written during the Vietnam War, but its clueless narrator ("No one likes us I don't know why/We may not be perfect but heaven knows we try") sounds a lot like a Bush Jr. cabinet member or this season's hottest Fox News pundit. Since the early '80s, Newman has focused the lion's share of his attention on soundtrack scores and sly but cuddly buddy songs. Songbook Vol. 1 makes one wish Newman would devote more of his energies to writing new songs as topical, vibrant, and biting as his old ones. --Keith Moerer Amazon.com

Better than his 'greatest hits'

Randy Newman of course never really had any hits, well not in the UK anyway. However this album from one of the best songwriters of the last 50 years really is something special. Not a compilation at all in fact, but complete re-recordings of some of his finest songs.

Recorded with vocal and grand Piano only this is exactly how you should hear any great songwriter, whether they are playing the Piano or not. The combination of voice and Piano is unbeatable for letting you hear the beauty of the music. Now of course Randy Newman is a very good pianist, but he's an even better songwriter who manages by some quirk of fate to be blessed with the ability to write tender love songs, as well as satirical and ironic tales on American society and the world in general.

This is a magnificent album by one of the most underrated musicians and songwriters out there.
September 1, 2008

Randy Newman's best album

I waited for something like this set for many years... just Randy Newman and a piano. (The previous released solo set, "Randy Newman Live" was recorded way back in 1970, near the beginning of his career... since then his voice has aged and improved, his piano playing is better than ever, and of course there are lots more songs to chose from now).

Some of the more politically oriented songs (The World Isn't Fair, Political Science, The Great Nations of Europe) come off sounding a bit like a cross between Ray Charles and Tom Lehrer--I don't listen to these as much, but that sort of song is a part of Newman's song output, so I can see why these representatives were picked.

Anyway, this is my favorite Randy Newman album by far (even more than everyone's favorite "Good Old Boys"), and easily 5 stars. I hope Volume 2 comes out soon! (And has "Mama Told Me Not to Come" on it!) August 25, 2008

Randy at his best

Think you know these songs? Try this album and learn them again in this brilliant session of Randy and his piano. Simply perfect. December 29, 2007

Randy Newman...at his best

To listen to Randy Newman sitting at a piano is pure pleasure. His lyrics are thought out and have meaning and purpose. The CD starts with "It's Lonely at the Top" with a quiet piano composition that flows into words about being the best (and still being lonely). Other great songs include "Louisiana 1927" (which tells about the 1927 Flood) with historical accuracy. The songs on the album make you think including the song "The World Isn't Fair" in which Newman tells Karl Marx the world isn't fair....it isn't and never shall be despite the ideas of Marx. Then, the song "Political Science" comes along with lyrics such as "We give them money, but are they grateful? No they're spiteful and they're hateful" when talking about the United States giving money to our "friends" (countries) with a great U.S. Centristic view of the world.

This is a great CD. Great music (including the piano version from one of his songs from "Toy Story") that makes you think about life, the world and the top notch lyrics of Randy Newman. July 5, 2007

Pleasant But Inessential

Sometimes it pays to revisit something before sounding off. I thought that this disc had been substantially overpraised here and elsewhere, and was sharpening my pen to give it an outright pan: a substantial set of songs ill-served by mummified late-career recreations; pencil sketches beside the richer hues of the original oil paintings. I gave it another listen in its entirety before writing, and that would have been too harsh a view. It even has some competitive strengths I had forgotten: it's a very generously filled disc, and it has been beautifully produced by the distinguished Mitchell Froom -- Newman's piano (the only musical instrument) is heard in glowing recorded sound of such precise fidelity that one can hear the felt covering the strings when he pedals. The reservations I have are at the level of performance and concept rather than production.

When a musical artist returns after a period of decades to the same material he has previously set down, the main criterion by which we must evaluate the wisdom of the endeavor is, does he have anything new to say? Has his interpretation "deepened"? Are there shadings available to him that were not available before? To all of these questions I would have to say no (although my questions do not always apply well here; I'm not sure a "deeper" version of "Political Science," which was always puerile and probably was intended to be, is possible or desirable). Newman's performances throughout this set are assured but cautious and low-key; he's *too* familiar with these songs. There's no discovery, or rediscovery, only the professionalism of routine. It's telling that he seems most enthusiastic in the two most recent songs ("The Great Nations of Europe" and "The World Isn't Fair," from '99's unjustly commercially ignored BAD LOVE).

Some reviewers have praised the disc because they prefer to hear him with the accompaniment only of his piano. I don't quite go along with that, as it applies to this set, for a couple of reasons:

(1) Newman is, of course, an estimable composer of orchestral scores, and his skill as an arranger is one of the things that most attract me to his work. I almost invariably have the sense on his pop albums that he has chosen a particular setting for a song for very specific reasons, be that setting spare, lush, something in between, or spare and building *to* lush. Think, for example, of the swell of the strings and brass as the slave trader drives home his pitch in the chorus of "Sail Away" (the verses of which are much more lightly scored). The beauty is as false as the promises the character is making, but the music is as compelling and seductive as it should be: sweetness with a terrible, decadent rot at the center. The "unplugged" version of the same song on the present album seems pallid by comparison. I believe that goes for other songs here that were originally recorded with orchestra: certainly "Louisiana 1927" and "Marie." The quiet, stark version of "In Germany Before The War" included here, on the other hand, matches the LITTLE CRIMINALS version; both treatments well serve this creepy, disturbing song -- a minor masterpiece of elliptical dread and implied menace.

(2) Even though I grant the premise that Newman is capable of captivating performances when he's alone at the piano, I don't think the safety-first displays on THE RANDY NEWMAN SONGBOOK should be anyone's Exhibit A. If you have the 1998 box set, compare the present disc to the demos of "Days of Heaven," "Going Home (1918)," "Something To Sing About," "What Have You Done To Me?" "The Longest Night," and "Laugh And Be Happy." Despite the occasional ragged edge, *those* recordings paradoxically seem like true "performances"; they're full of wit, daring, feeling, boldness, variety of delivery. The SONGBOOK recordings (though intended all along for commercial release) seem like the "demonstrations." Both his playing and his singing were dynamic and energized on the demos, at any tempo, in a way that I missed here. The comparison brings me to another point: while he has lost nothing in his touch at the piano, his vocals have declined post LAND OF DREAMS, and I'm not sure whether it's attributable to the aging process or just a layer of rust that's set in from his devoting more of his time to writing film scores than singing in the last 15 years. I noticed a heavy-handedness creeping in on FAUST and BAD LOVE -- a tendency to sing monotonously loudly and sort of shamble and belt through songs where a lighter touch would have been appropriate (e.g., "Every Time It Rains"; "I Miss You"; "My Country"). It's even more noticeable here, on songs he sang better (in a purely mechanical sense) decades ago.

When I saw the track listing, I most looked forward to hearing "When She Loved Me" -- the poignant ballad sung by Sarah McLachlan for TOY STORY 2 -- performed by its composer, but be forewarned that the version here is only a brief thematic reminiscence on the piano (as are the other movie themes). Thus the album deprives itself of another potential boasting point.

It may seem as though I still am being unduly negative. This warrants three stars for the quality of the songs and the immaculate sonics, but I feel it amounts to less than any non-soundtrack album Newman has ever released, and is less essential even than a few of the soundtracks (certainly RAGTIME). It likely came about as a result of commercial calculations, not on Newman's part but on that of his new label. With Rhino having a one-disc greatest hits album on the market, culled from the superb box set and containing many of these same songs in their original, definitive renditions, his current label, Nonesuch, wanted a competing disc to tempt cultists and to snare (dare I say, mislead) newcomers. I don't blame Newman for going along with it; he has always simply wanted his songs to have the widest possible exposure, and whatever I feel about this particular disc, his songs deserve all the attention they get and more. I only hope that he's been busy writing in the ensuing years, and that his next release for Nonesuch will be as thoroughly original as he is. His gifts are as an observer and a creator, not as the docent of his own musical museum, however gamely he plays that role. May 26, 2007

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