A FEW WORDS IN DEFENSE OF OUR COUNTRY

Singing the praises of a great satirist.

Randy Newman is most famous for his perky Toy Story tune “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” which captures all of his melodic skill but little of his gift for lyrical subtlety. He achieved critical acclaim, and a few moments of pop chart success, years earlier with spikier tunes about sex, bigotry, and greed. Listeners didn’t always get his jokes—“Short People” wasn’t a critique of the height-challenged, and “I Love L.A.” wasn’t a valentine to the city. But he persisted, and former Los Angeles Times pop music critic Hilburn (Paul Simon: The Life, 2018, etc.) dutifully chronicles Newman’s musical story, from his childhood in a storied family (three of his uncles were acclaimed film composers), to songwriting wunderkind (Harry Nilsson recorded a whole album of Newman songs well before he became a star), to his film soundtrack work (for which he’s received 22 Oscar nods, winning twice), and his yearslong effort to mount a musical based on the Faust story. Yet he’s also professed profound insecurity across his career. Hilburn had ample access to Newman, his family, and musical collaborators. But the book mainly chronicles Newman’s work and chart performance, giving his motivations short shrift. How did a well-off Jewish Angeleno understand poor Southerners so well? What gave this insecure man the courage to perpetually provoke, even outrage, his audiences? Divorce and a period of drug addiction are skated over. Though Hilburn describes Newman’s career comprehensively, it doesn’t quite capture a man in full.

An ambitious if sometimes shallow exploration of one of pop’s undisputed geniuses.