When folks under the age of 35 hear the name Randy Newman, they’re struck in the chest by the beast named ‘nostalgia’, casting their willful minds back to the simpler times circa Toy Story 1995.

"Sail Away" is one of Randy Newman's most familiar compositions. It features Randy's sharp political satire by playing the roll of a slave herder telling Africans how great it will be when they get to ...

“Sail Away” is about trying to convince African people to get on the slave ships and sail away, since life would be oh so much better for them in the United States. But you also need to own Newman’s ...

Take Randy Newman, for instance. Speaking about Wilson’s work, the first-rate composer exclaimed, “Brian Wilson is one of the greatest creative artists in the history of popular music. Pet Sounds is a ...

At the start of the ’70s, Randy Newman was building a reputation as a songwriter whose work could be covered by a wide swath of artists. But he wasn’t receiving a lot of hype as an artist in ...

Hilburn works best as a researcher who can contextualise Newman’s more historically and conceptually ambitious works: the slaver-shyster saga Sail Away, the recurring flood myth of Louisiana ...

Randy Newman has fun getting under such people’s skin. The irony about this virtuoso of political irony is that his best-known works are entirely apolitical.

Randy Newman has fun getting under such people’s skin. The irony about this virtuoso of political irony is that his best-known works are entirely apolitical.

The performance was visceral and devastating. “Louisiana 1927,” a classic from Randy Newman’s album “Good Old Boys” (1974), could have easily been written any time in the past hundred years.

That record Sail Away is absolutely amazing and it’s because the lyricism is so to the point. I’ve often found in my songwriting that when I’m sitting down to write a song I spend the first verse ...