What does /mu/ think of Randy Newman?

randy numale

>>75149058
He's alright, I like Nilson better.

Hes a legend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8UVBgUd9GE

>>75149058
OVERRATED

And you thought Bob Dylan was sarcastic...

Very underrated but don't expect too much discussion here.

Nilson Sings Newman is nice too

>>75149058
Like him more than Dylan to be honest.

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2 Songs [Reprise, 1970]

As a rule, American songwriting is banal, prolix, and virtually solipsistic when it wants to be honest, merely banal when it doesn't. Newman's truisms--always concise, never confessional--are his own. Speaking through recognizable American grotesques, he comments here on the generation gap (doomed), incendiary violence (fucked up but sexy), male and female (he identifies with the males, most of whom are losers and weirdos), racism (he's against it, but he knows its seductive power), and alienation (he's for it). Newman's music counterposes his indolent drawl--the voice of a Jewish kid from L.A. who grew up on Fats Domino--against an array of instrumental settings that on this record range from rock to bottleneck to various shades of jazz. And because his lyrics abjure metaphor and his music recalls commonplaces without repeating them, he can get away with the kind of calculated effects that destroy more straightforward meaning-mongers. A perfect album. A+

Live [Reprise, 1971]

Six of these fourteen wonderful songs are on Newman's first album and four on his second, all set off by the arrangements that are the other half of his gift, none crippled by one-take vocals. Of the four new ones, "Lonely at the Top"--originally written for Frank Sinatra, who refused to have anything to do with it--is the only killer. B

I've only heard a few songs but I really like them.

>>75149058

He and Warren Zevon are fucking hilarious and dark as shit, yet somehow managed to craft some incredibly beautiful melodies

why Randy chose to tarnish his art by making movie OSTs I don't understand

>>75149058
Randy possesses a genius that takes quite a few listens to appreciate. One of the best.

>>75149058
Pretty underrated

Most people only know the singles but he's very prolific with an all-time classic voice
>>75151178
Is that a fucking bob's burgers shirt

>>75151247
I like his movie work.

>>75151247
Yeah, kinda makes people respect his actual albums less because they know him from that stuff. I do really love his Toy Story song though, it's just fucking good. Mark Mothersborough of Devo also does tons of movie and cartoon scores that seem weird for him.

have you ever traveled to los angeles?

>>75149058

It occurred to me that most of my favorite songwriters are Jews

Warren Zevon, Randy Newman, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and of course Bobby D

Why do the chosen have such a gift for melody?

>>75152643
they run the world anon

>>75152653
stuff like this is actually only latently cancerous

Love him.
Anybody who can write a song about Huey Long and make him a folk hero shares my sense of dark sarcasm.