He has managed, over nearly half a century, to find major record labels more than happy to subsidize him (he is currently with Nonesuch, a division of Warner Bros., where his recording career began), and, this summer, he will release his 12th, as yet untitled, studio album. for the songwriter, who turned 72 last November. I think IвЂ™d have been interesting, right? But I donвЂ™t know whether anyone would have subsidized me, or found me as interesting as I did.вЂќ The Family BusinessДЄs it is, things turned out O.K. He went on: вЂњIвЂ™ve often wondered if IвЂ™d have kept going in that direction, accompanying myself with an orchestra and taking things apart, what IвЂ™d have been. Back then, I felt it was almost like cheating to have a drum. It was like Homo robustus-well, no, because robustus wouldnвЂ™t be the right name for not having a drum. Newman described the new American music that he and his colleagues were attempting as вЂњa branch of Homo that didnвЂ™t become Homo sapiens. And, lo, the choogling rock hegemony prevailed. Another ambitious album of the period, also of young-composer provenance and non-rock atmosphere, the Beach BoysвЂ™ Smile, with music by Brian Wilson and lyrics by Parks, was famously abandoned by Wilson, left incomplete. Why not wed that heritage to contemporary pop songs? For Randy and a few young compatriots in his native Los Angeles, including his fellow singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson and the two men who produced Randy Newman, Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks, the late 60s were a time of open-ended pop possibility.Д«ut the dream didnвЂ™t pan out those late-60s albums got good reviews but didnвЂ™t sell. Two other uncles, Emil and Lionel, were also composer-conductors. His eponymous debut album, released in June 1968, was heavy on strings and light on drums, its songs at once tuneful and outrГ©, describable only in odd compound terms like вЂњmovingly sarcasticвЂќ (the bumвЂ™s-eye-view ballad вЂњI Think ItвЂ™s Going to Rain TodayвЂќ) and вЂњmordantly tenderвЂќ (the albumвЂ™s opener, вЂњLove Story,вЂќ whose young narrator envisions his and his girlвЂ™s entire future together, all the way to being sent away by their children to a retirement home, where theyвЂ™ll вЂњplay checkers all day, вЂtil we pass awayвЂќ).Д«ig arrangements came naturally to Newman his uncle Alfred, the oldest of his fatherвЂ™s six brothers, had from 1940 to 1960 been the musical director of Twentieth Century Fox, overseeing what was widely regarded as the best studio orchestra in Hollywood. ItвЂ™s a notion that Randy Newman has often contemplated, especially when he thinks back to his early recording career. And not in that proficient but retro-skewing Connick-BublГ© way, but progressively, with new wrinkles and developments coming year after year. Not in opposition to rock, but alongside it. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, Frank Loesser, and Burt Bacharach-had continued to flourish. Suppose that pop music-in the pre-modern sense of the term, as in American popular song, the kind of music once enjoyed by grown-ups and kids alike, from the time of Stephen Foster to the heydays of Scott Joplin, George M. Suppose, for a moment, that teens and electric guitars hadnвЂ™t won.

Randy newman albums