Randy Newman - 12 Songs poll

I don't mind the sentimental fluff

but also wish I was more into his old stuff, great songwriter

As a film composer, he's not bad at all, but writing for Hollywood films - especially if it's for someone like Ron Howard, Disney, etc. - usually means he's got to lean hard into sentimentality.

To be fair, it's that element that makes some of his earlier records - Good Old Boys and especially "Sail Away" - all the more powerful. It can deconstruct the baggage that comes with those lush, romantic Hollywood orchestrations, and it makes the untrustworthy narration of something like "Sail Away" sharper and all the more effective, emphasizing the myth of the American dream that we shouldn't buy into. Greil Marcus nailed it in Mystery Train, what the narrator is selling is "what America would like to believe about itself, and what ten years of [the Vietnam] war across the ocean and ten years of bitter black faces will never let it believe, even in secret: that everything American did was for the good. Better than good: that God's work really was our own and meant to be. That we brought something new and precious into the world, a land even the most miserable slaves would recognize as Eden."

I still need to do a deeper dive into his earlier songs, when most of his stuff was recorded by other people. I know like a handful from albums I already own (Blood, Sweat & Tears' Child Is Father to the Man, Dusty in Memphis) and the Harry Nilsson album where he only does Randy Newman covers is one of Nilsson's very best (his other Newman covers before and after that album are consistently good). Ace in the UK also has two volumes of a compilation (all covers of Newman songs) that includes a lot of those early songs too.

Those Ace comps are terrific, some really fantastic stuff on there

Misread that, thought it said “Those Ace doubles” and did an, um, double take.

I hoped for 12 votes and got them.

I don't mind the sentimental fluff

I wonder if this is the only Newman studio album with no string arrangements?