The <i>Dark Matter</i> of America's Foremost Musical Satirist
To the question, “Do you know the work of Randy Newman,” the answer is too often, “The guy who did the Toy Story soundtrack? ‘You’ve got a friend in me …’ that’s him, right?”
And okay, sure. He composed soundtracks to the whole Toy Story series, among other well-loved films: Ragtime, The Natural, Parenthood, Awakenings, The Paper, Maverick, A Bug’s Life, Meet the Parents, Seabiscuit, Monsters University, and more. But summing him up like that is a bit like saying, “F. Scott Fitzgerald. Wasn’t he a screenwriter?”
Because while Newman is a talented and sought-after soundtrack composer, he is also a solo artist with a catalog as original as any in popular music. It stretches back to 1968. Yet even most folks who can hum his biggest commercial hits, “Short People,” “Mama Told Me Not to Come” (popularized by Three Dog Night), and “I Love L.A.,” fail to grasp how he would be regarded in a more just and discerning world. For Randy Newman is the foremost musical satirist of his generation––and the characters he has created and themes he has explored over his career show as nuanced a grasp of America’s dark currents and humanity’s crooked timber as any songwriter has managed. In fact, there may be no one in the American songbook whose work did more to anticipate the tragicomic place the United States finds itself in today.
His latest solo album, Dark Matter, added to that corpus when it dropped earlier this month. To grasp its worthy continuities and its single disappointment, I must first take you back.
* * *
The eponymous debut album that Randy Newman released in 1968 was a portent of all that followed. Its11tracks might be described as rock or pop except that they were backed by a full orchestra. Poignant songs aboutromanticlonging, like
