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**1990: Nominee - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - ''[[Parenthood]]''
**1990: Nominee - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - ''[[Parenthood]]''
**1983: Nominee - Score Album for Motion Picture or Television - ''[[Ragtime (film)|Ragtime]]''
**1983: Nominee - Score Album for Motion Picture or Television - ''[[Ragtime (film)|Ragtime]]''

*[[Emmy]]
**2004: Winner - Main Title Theme Music - ''[[Monk (TV series)|Monk]]''
**1991: Winner - Achievement in Music and Lyrics - ''[[Cop Rock]]''


*[[Annie Award]]
*[[Annie Award]]
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**1997: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - ''[[Cats Don't Dance]]''
**1997: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - ''[[Cats Don't Dance]]''
**1996: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - ''[[Toy Story]]''
**1996: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - ''[[Toy Story]]''

*[[BAFTA Award]]
**1983: Nominee - Original Song - "One More Hour" - ''[[Ragtime (film)|Ragtime]]''

*[[Chicago Film Critics Association Award]]
**1999: Nominee - Original Score - ''[[A Bug's Life]]''
**1996: Winner - Original Score - ''[[Toy Story]]''

*[[Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award]]
**1981: Winner - Music - ''[[Ragtime (film)|Ragtime]]''

*[[Online Film Critics Society Award]]
**1999: Winner - Original Score - ''[[Pleasantville (film)|Pleasantville]]''


==Trivia==
==Trivia==

Revision as of 21:05, 25 April 2007

Randy Newman

Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an Academy Award-winning American songwriter, arranger, singer and pianist who is notable for his mordant (and often satirical) pop songs and for his many film scores.

Newman is noted for his practice of writing lyrics from the perspective of a "character" far removed from Newman's own biography, often utilizing the literary device of an unreliable narrator. For example, the 1972 song "Sail Away" is written as slave trader's sales pitch to attract slaves, while the narrator of "Political Science" is a U.S. nationalist who complains of worldwide ingratitude toward America and proposes a brutally ironic final solution ("Let's drop the big one").

Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. His film scores include Ragtime, The Natural, Toy Story, Meet the Parents and Seabiscuit.

He has also been singled out for a bevy of awards by his colleagues, including an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, four Grammy Awards, and the Governor's Award of the recording academy.[1] Randy Newman was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 2002.

Biography

Born in Los Angeles, California, as an infant Newman moved with his Jewish-American family to New Orleans, Louisiana, where his mother's family lived. He lived in New Orleans as a small child and spent summers there until he was eleven years old, his family having by then returned to Los Angeles. The paternal side of his family includes three uncles who were noted Hollywood film-score composers: Alfred Newman, Lionel Newman and Emil Newman. Newman's cousins Thomas, David, and Joey are also composers for motion pictures. Newman attended the University of California, Los Angeles.

Songwriter

Newman became a professional songwriter by the time he was seventeen; his first single as a performer was 1961's "Golden Gridiron Boy", released when he was eighteen. However, the single flopped and Newman chose to concentrate on songwriting and arranging for the next several years. His early songs were recorded by Gene Pitney, among others.

In the mid-1960's, Newman was briefly a member of the band The Tikis, who would later on become Harpers Bizarre, best known for their 1967 hit version of the Paul Simon composition, "Feelin' Groovy." Newman would keep a close musical relationship with Harpers Bizarre, offering them some of his own compositions, including "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear" (later covered by Alan Price, formerly of The Animals, and also performed by Scooter and Fozzie the Bear on the very first episode of The Muppet Show) and "Happyland".

His 1968 debut album, Randy Newman, never dented the Billboard Top 200. However, many artists, including Alan Price, Judy Collins, the Everly Brothers, Dusty Springfield, Pat Boone and Peggy Lee, covered his songs. In 1970, Harry Nilsson recorded an album of Newman compositions called Nilsson Sings Newman. That album was a success, and it paved the way for Newman's 1970 release, 12 Songs, which abandoned the elaborate arrangements of his first album for a more stripped-down sound that showcased Newman's piano. 12 Songs was critically acclaimed, but again found little commercial success, though Three Dog Night made a huge hit of his "Mama Told Me Not to Come". The following year, Randy Newman Live cemented his cult following and became his first LP to appear in the Billboard charts, at #191.

1972's Sail Away reached #163 on Billboard, with the title track making its way into the repertoire of Ray Charles and Linda Ronstadt. "You Can Leave Your Hat On," written from the point of view of a sexual fetishist, was covered by Joe Cocker and later, by Keb Mo, Tom Jones, Three Dog Night and Etta James. The album also featured "Burn On": an ode to that infamous night in Cleveland when the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River literally caught fire. In 1989, "Burn On" was used as the opening theme to the film Major League, whose focus was the hapless Cleveland Indians.

Two of the songs on "Sail Away," "Political Science" and "God's Song" are as caustic as anything Newman has ever written. The former lampoons American arrogance and states that since the US is hated the world over, it might as well "drop the big one," incinerating every other nation (with the exception of Australia). In the latter song, also covered by Etta James, Newman takes on religion by assuming the voice of God: "I burn down your cities - how blind you must be/I take from you your children and you say 'How blessed are we'/You must all be crazy to put your faith in me/That's why I love mankind."

His 1974 release Good Old Boys was a set of songs about the American South; "Rednecks" began with a description of segregationist Lester Maddox pitted against a "smart-ass New York Jew" on a TV show, in a song that seems to criticize both southern racism and the complacent bigotry of American northeasterners who stereotype all southerners as racist. This ambiguity was also apparent on "Kingfish" and "Every Man a King", the former a paean to Huey Long (the assassinated former Governor of, and United States Senator for, the State of Louisiana), the other a campaign song written by Long himself. An album that received lavish critical praise, Good Old Boys also became a commercial breakthrough for Newman, peaking at #36 on Billboard and spending 21 weeks in the Top 200.

Little Criminals (1977) contains the surprise hit "Short People", which also became a subject of controversy, as Newman's ironic depiction of bigotry aimed at the short was taken literally by some listeners. It stands as the best-selling single and album of his career. In 1978, legislation was introduced to make playing the song on the radio illegal in Maryland, though the bill failed to pass. Newman often pokes fun at the misinterpretation of his song during concerts, sarcastically announcing, "I hate short people, it's true. The reason I don't say anything is because the record label's afraid I'll tell people what I really think." 1979's Born Again was a prescient commentary on the money-worship of the coming era of Reaganomics, which also featured a song satirically mythologizing the Electric Light Orchestra (and their arranging style) entitled "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band".

His 1983 album Trouble in Paradise included the hit single "I Love L.A.," a song that has been interpreted as both praising and critiquing its subject, in this case, Los Angeles. This ambivalence is borne out by Newman's own comments on the song. As he explained in a 2001 interview, "There's some kind of ignorance L.A. has that I'm proud of. The open car and the redhead, the Beach Boys... that sounds 'really' good to me." The ABC network and Frank Gari Productions transformed "I Love L.A." into an extremely popular '80s TV promotional campaign, retooling the lyrics and title to "You'll Love It! (on ABC)".

While increasingly focusing on film scoring after Trouble in Paradise, he has released two albums of new material as a singer-songwriter since that time: Land of Dreams (1988) and Bad Love (1999). He has also re-recorded a number of his earlier songs, accompanying himself on piano, as The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1 (2003), and continues to perform his songs before live audiences as a touring concert artist.

In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe of 2005, Newman's "Louisiana 1927," about the inadequate government response to an earlier flood in the American south, spontaneously became an anthem, played heavily on a wide range of American radio and television stations, in both Newman's 1974 original and Aaron Neville's cover version of the song.

During a European tour in the summer of 2006, Newman premiered three new songs: "Potholes in Memory Lane" (a straight blues song about losing your memory when you get older), "Missing You" (a love ballad), and the political controversial "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country". The latter was released as an mp3 single in February 2007. It favorably compares the leaders of the United States to those of previous empires, although it criticizes the War on Terror and the Supreme Court, and posits that "this empire is ending like all the rest." The song is available through his website [1]. Some other new songs that Newman has been working on include "Easy Street", "Fat and Angry", and a song about the 20th century.

Film composer

Newman's work as a film composer began in 1971, with his work on the Bud Yorkin satire Cold Turkey. He returned to film work with 1981's Ragtime, for which he was nominated for two Academy Awards. Newman co-wrote the 1986 film ¡Three Amigos! with Steve Martin and Lorne Michaels, wrote three songs for the film, and provided the voice for the singing bush.

Newman scored the first four Disney/Pixar feature films; Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. In these scores he achieved an individual style that makes his music immediately recognizable as his own. He also scored the 1996 film James and the Giant Peach and the 2006 Disney/Pixar film Cars. Additional scores by Newman include Avalon, Parenthood, Seabiscuit, Awakenings, The Paper, Overboard, Meet the Parents, and its sequel, Meet the Fockers.

One of Newman's most iconic and recognizable works is the central theme to The Natural, a dramatic and Oscar-nominated score, which was described by at least one complimentary critic as "Coplandesque."

Newman had the dubious distinction of receiving the most Oscar nominations (fifteen) without a single win. His streak was broken when he received the Oscar for Best Song in 2001, for the Monsters Inc. song "If I Didn't Have You", beating the likes of Enya and Paul McCartney. After receiving an enthusiastic standing ovation, a bemused but emotional Newman began his acceptance speech with "I don't want your pity!"

Besides writing songs for films, he also writes songs for television series such as the Emmy-Award winning current theme song of Monk, "It's a Jungle out There"

In October 2006 it was revealed that Randy Newman will be writing the music to an upcoming Walt Disney movie called The Frog Princess, which is scheduled for release in 2009. During the Walt Disney Company's annual shareholder meeting in March 2007, Randy Newman performed a new song written for the movie. He was hereby accompanied by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Musical theater

In the 1990s, Newman adapted Goethe's Faust into a concept album and musical, Randy Newman's Faust. After a 1995 staging at the La Jolla Playhouse, he retained David Mamet to help rework the book before its relaunch on the Chicago Goodman Theatre mainstage in 1996. Newman's Faust project had been many years in the making, and it suffered for it; a central joke was Newman's depiction of Faust as a shallow heavy metal music fan in thrall to Satan, and this had to be modified to accommodate the less-than-devil obsessed age of grunge rock that was in fashion by 1995.

In 2000 South Coast Repertory produced The Education of Randy Newman, a musical theatre piece which recreates the life of a songwriter who bears some resemblance to the actual Newman. Set in New Orleans and Los Angeles, it was modeled on the celebrated American autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams. Newman, together with Jerry Patch and Michael Roth, surveyed Newman's songs to find those which, taken together, depict the life of an American artist in the last half of the 20th Century. After its premiere at SCR, it was reworked with additional songs written specifically for the show by Newman and presented in Seattle by ACT.

Selected discography

Main article: Randy Newman discography

Awards/Nominations

  • Golden Globe
    • 2000: Nominee - Original Song - "When She Loved Me" - Toy Story 2
    • 1999: Nominee - Original Score - A Bug's Life
    • 1996: Nominee - Original Song - "You've Got a Friend" - Toy Story
    • 1991: Nominee - Original Score - Avalon
    • 1990: Nominee - Original Song - "I Love to See You Smile" - Parenthood
    • 1982: Nominee - Original Song - "One More Hour" - Ragtime
  • Grammy
    • 2007: Winner - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "Our Town" - Cars
    • 2004: Nominee - Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture or Television - Seabiscuit
    • 2003: Winner - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "If I Didn't Have You" - Monsters, Inc.'
    • 2003: Nominee - Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture or Television - Monsters, Inc.
    • 2001: Winner - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "When She Loved Me" - Toy Story 2'
    • 2001: Nominee - Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture or Television - Toy Story 2
    • 2000: Winner - Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television - A Bug's Life
    • 2000: Nominee - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - "The Time Of Your Life" - A Bug's Life'
    • 1992: Nominee - Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television - Avalon
    • 1992: Nominee - Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television - Awakenings
    • 1990: Nominee - Song Written for Motion Picture or Television - Parenthood
    • 1983: Nominee - Score Album for Motion Picture or Television - Ragtime
  • Emmy
    • 2004: Winner - Main Title Theme Music - Monk
    • 1991: Winner - Achievement in Music and Lyrics - Cop Rock
  • Annie Award
    • 2007: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Cars
    • 2003: Nominee - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Monsters, Inc.
    • 2000: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Toy Story 2
    • 1997: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Cats Don't Dance
    • 1996: Winner - Music in an Animated Feature Production - Toy Story

Trivia

File:Randy Newman.jpg
Randy Newman parodied in Showtime's animated television series Queer Duck.
  • Randy Newman was parodied in the television show Family Guy in the episode "Da Boom", where he sits at a piano singing about everything he sees. Newman was voiced by Will Sasso, who was reprising the character from a recurring MADtv sketch. He reappeared in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story as he sings the theme song to a trailer of fictional film "The littlest Bunny".
  • Randy Newman appeared on The Colbert Report on October 9, 2006, performing "Political Science" after his interview. At the end of the performance Stephen Colbert said "I hope they're listening in D.C." This appearance came days after North Korea conducted an underground test of a nuclear weapon.
  • Randy wrote 'Lonely at The Top' for Frank Sinatra. He claims that Sinatra turned it down on the grounds that people wouldn't see the irony.
  • Randy also wrote 'Everytime it Rains' - a track from his 'Bad Love' album - for Michael Jackson, who was said to have declined.
  • Excerpts from Randy's original soundtrack for the 1984 Robert Redford film The Natural were used in the memorable series finale of the hit 1988-93 ABC-TV series The Wonder Years. Portions of the same soundtrack were again used a decade later to close ABC's 50th Anniversary Special.

References

  1. ^ See his career chronology at randynewman.com


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