Three Dog Night took his 'Mama Told Me Not to Come' to number one in 1970, the same year Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Randy's songs, Nilsson Sings Newman. His eponymous debut album received little attention upon its 1968 release, but over the next few years, his reputation as a songwriter grew as Judy Collins, Dusty Springfield, and Peggy Lee recorded his songs. in music from UCLA, but he dropped out of college when his friend Lenny Waronker landed him a record contract with Reprise Records. franchises), Newman's solo efforts became infrequent, but 2008's Harps and Angels and 2017's Dark Matter showed his unique melodic sense of lyrical poison pen were still in fighting shape.īorn into a musical family - his uncles Alfred and Lionel were both noted film composers - Randy Newman had become a professional songwriter by the time he was 17, working for a California publishing house. After scoring a number of animated blockbusters for Pixar and Disney (including the Toy Story and Monsters Inc. Though he occasionally showed sympathy for his characters, he became well known for his acidic sense of satire, highlighted by his fluke 1978 hit 'Short People' and his parody of '80s yuppies, 'I Love L.A.' Newman's records consistently received strongly positive reviews, especially 1972's Sail Away and 1974's Good Old Boys, and he enjoyed a commercial breakthrough with 1977's Little Criminals, but he became a wealthy man by composing scores for films like Ragtime and The Natural.

Where his peers concentrated on confessional songwriting, Newman drew characters, creating a world filled with misfits, outcasts, charlatans, and con men. Newman developed an idiosyncratic style that alternated between sweeping, cinematic pop and rolling R&B, which were tied together by his intelligently biting sense of humor. An anomaly among early-'70s singer/songwriters, Randy Newman may have been slightly influenced by Bob Dylan, but his music owed more to New Orleans R&B and traditional pop than folk.

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