Bandsplain - Randy Newman with Molly Lambert

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

Songwriter laureate of Los Angeles Randy Newman gets explained by the Valley’s own Molly Lambert. Infinitely more prolific, and controversial, than his common image suggests as the “I Love LA” and Toy Story theme song guy, Molly takes Yasi on a tour of his extensive and complex oeuvre as Hollywood songman. Follow Molly Lambert at @mollylambert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplaine? Hello and welcome to Bandsplane. I am your host, Yossi Sallick. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to explain a cult band or iconic artist to me and to you. Today's episode is about Randy Newman.

If you've never heard Randy Newman, we're going to ride it till we just can't ride it no more. This is what Randy Newman sounds like. My guest today is writer and podcaster Molly Lamber, the princess of the entire valley and creator of the upcoming podcast, Heidi World, the Heidi Fly Story, in which yours truly does make a little acting cameo. I'm an actor. Welcome to the show, Molly.

Hello, thanks for having me. I mean, who else would I have on this particular topic? So excited to talk about Randy Newman. A lot to talk about as this man has not stopped making music since 1964, and we are now in 2022. You literally cannot stop him from writing little ragtimey songs. Molly, you are a Los Angeles native born and bred. Tell me why you wanted to talk about Randall Newman. Well, you suggested a few ideas, and I feel like we kind of zeroed in on like a dirtbag, L.A. singer-songwriter.

of the 1970s is really where I live. Randy Newman, not the dirtbaggiest of the 70s, singer-songwriters, but in many ways, by far the most successful. And not the person I would have guessed would be the most successful person because what he does is so weird.

And the fact that he turned it into a career as a children's composer is the funniest thing in the world because his early stuff is so dark. It's truly like the arc of like it was a different time, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think just looking at his career because I didn't even, like I got into sort of

the earliest part of his career where he was writing songs for like Silla Black and people writing sort of like 60s pop songs, which I hadn't even really, a couple of those songs I love and I did not even know they were Randy Newman's songs. but they have this sort of like bittersweetness to them. All of his music

has this like bittersweet. His music is ironic, which is like very hard to do well. The other people who I like in this space. In this milieu. And this milly, yeah. And these are like my favorite people are like, you know, Warren's Yvonne.

Loudon Wainwright, the third. I'm hold up in a Hollywood hotel suite. Tequila to drink and have a carlid to eat. I love all these kind of like 70s men who write, you know, even like Leonard Cohen, I feel like falls into this category in some ways. Jazz bullies are paid by J-Col-Gaddy. Sleezy songcraft. And just like a little bit of showmanship.

And I think Randy Newman comes a little bit from an entertainment family. I believe there's people in his family who worked in Hollywood as composers. That's right. So that also really just jibes with my brain is like people. who want to be in entertainment, but figure out a way to make it lucrative. Yeah, totally. Like, it's a career. It was no, it's like, I mean, I think obviously what Randy Newman does is a craft,

but I think he would be the first to say that first and foremost, he looked at this as a job. Yeah, he's clearly good at the career part of it in a way maybe his peers weren't or couldn't be because it is like, I cannot imagine a Warren Zeevon Pixar song, although I really, really want to. And I guess Werewolves of London is actually Could be like the hotel Transylvania, you know? 100%. Also, listen, Mr. Trent Resner

is scoring Soul or whatever. Like, people, he went from wanting to fuck you like an animal to scoring a Disney film. It is a very smart path and Trent Resner's smart also for doing it. Because I do think it's like at a certain part

if you age out of like being a pop star, which I'll say Trent Resner is, You know, if you age out of like being at the forefront of the mainstream, the smartest thing to do, then you get to be, then you're like, I'm a composer now. All the respect. You don't have to humiliate yourself. Yeah. You get nominated for Oscars. You can still go be the god of fuck on stage at festivals. Totally. I have to say, I mean, again, you and producer Dylan share this love of the sleazy 70s male songwriter. I love Leonard Cohen, but past that, I'm like, honestly, it's a bit of a blind spot for.

me. But you love the red hot chili peppers who are like the 90s outgrowth of this culture. That's what I'm saying. It's like all of these people are writing songs about just like hanging out in bars in Hollywood. Yeah, I guess like my, the thing that I find so interesting about Randy Newman is that it's like a beat and switch, right? Because he's so steeped in Gershwin and like, you know, classical sort of great American songbook type composers. And then I think he'd be the first to admit. I think I did listen to a bunch. He was the first to admit many times.

That, like, you know, his musical inputs are not a lot. Like, he liked Ray Charles. Now, baby, listen, baby, don't you treat me this away. Well, I'll be back on my feet someday. And James Brown. I feel good. And Gershwin. And that was kind of it.

Then he just started writing. own music and like kind of never ever paid attention to other things that were going on in music. Yeah, I think I also like that is a person who just kind of is pursuing their own thing and clearly knows what they want to do and isn't affected by whatever's going on around them. Because obviously like Rannie Newman's music never sounded like other people's music at the time. You know, there were other people doing sort of the like composer early like American Great American Songbook, like you were saying. And I think that can get really pretentious really easily also.

Totally. And the thing about Randy Newman that stops him from being schmaltzy or just kind of like embarrassing. And obviously when you look at him now, it's like I can see if you have just encountered Randy Newman now. Right. That you might think he's kind of just this like corn dog. Yeah, like you've only heard I Love L.A. in the Toy Story song and you're like, what are you guys talking about? And that's why when you go back and listen to his music, it's like completely insane

that this person became like a beloved mainstream figure because his music is so fucking dark. It's so dark. It's literally like, that's what I'm saying. It's such a bad and switch where it's like, bum bum, bum, bum, bum, cocaine. You know? And you're like, wait, this is about a guy doing cocaine

in like a CD bar, but then the music that it's delivered in, it's like a Trojan horse. Okay, so that is my thing also. Because that is like you also just, described Steely Dan, right? There's nothing I love more than like some fucked up lyrics with like some kind of, you know, grooving music.

Yeah, Steely Dan I feel like is more like it's like ASMR music where they're like, we'll trick you with this like very easy to listen to music and then inside of it are these like dastardly lyrics. Whereas like Rani Newman is like, this is like Porgy and Bess except it's about like blowing fucking rails at, you know, the strip club. Hey, I mean, Porgy and Bass also pretty, pretty insane. I mean, okay, so the thing about Randy Newman also, this is like, as I was making a playlist for it,

there were like some songs I left off because I was like, I do not want to be an edge lord. There's some edge lordy stuff that will come up, though. This is one of those things where I was like, I'm not the person who's like, free speech means anything. Free speech means you can just say anything on the air and it's fine. But with some of this Randy Newman stuff, I was like,

this is the stuff that's too confusing and nuance for people. That's what it is, yeah. Because all of these songs are written from the point of view of characters. And a lot of his early stuff is written from the point of view of like really ignorant racists. Yeah. Unsavory characters. Unsavory characters. And he's in, And it's just like this debate everyone's been having about art recently where it's like, it doesn't tell you what to think about it.

It's just, it's pretty obvious where he falls on it to me, which is that he's not a racist. He's making fun of sort of genteel Southern racism and of working class white racism. Yeah. And he makes fun at the South a lot because he's also, he's from L.A., but he has family in New Orleans. And that also, to me, explains his sound a lot too. He's very much like a piano man. Yeah.

Well, let's, I mean, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We're going to cover all that ground. Let's, like you said, he was born in L.A., November 28th, 1943. That's right, a Sagittarius. You mentioned his family was in showbiz, but not his parents. I think his dad was a doctor and his mom was a secretary, but he had three uncles who were Hollywood film score composers, the oldest of which was very successful,

a man named Alfred Newman, who I think kind of brought, brought his other brothers into the craft. And they had won, like, 10 Oscars. Like, they were very successful. And he has said, like, many times that, like, you know, he grew up knowing that that was a possible job and, like, wanting to do it. And I think his dad was musical, too. He said his dad wrote songs.

I was just like, I was just talking about this also just in my profile of Alanaheim about just, like, people from the Valley and people from L.A. Who it's like, if you do grow up in L.A., you do see that, like, being a session musician is a job. and that there's a way to like turn something you want to do that's creative into possibly a career. And like maybe you're the fifth guy. Maybe you're just a session guitarist who does pickups for like an animated show. But it's still like there are ways to make money as a musician.

And if you are savvy about it, like Randy Newman clearly is. You can do it. Not if you grew up in Torrance, the daughter of two Iranian immigrants, one of whom's father was a man. mechanical engineer. Did they not encourage you to go into podcasting? They sure didn't. They weren't like in 1985.

Like, you know what you would be great at? Actually, like, talks too much being the main complaint on all of my report cards. If anybody had any vision, they could have been like, well, put her in broadcasting. But anyways, I didn't become a mechanical engineer. That's so funny. Okay, I mean, my dad was in radio. So look at you following in footsteps. Right. I'm like Randy Newman.

I'm like, oh, that's like something that's like I could do, you know? I can make a career out of it. Yeah. I mean, he also got forced out a radio like five times by corporate mergers, which like who knows anything about that? What's that like? If you see people doing something like that, it makes it seem much more like a real possibility.

Totally. These are achievable goals. And not just achievable. And I think this is like maybe a thing that I noticed again and again with Randy and Newman that strikes me. And he is not a rock star and he doesn't have any interest in being a rock star. And I don't even think that's what making music looked like to him. It was very like pragmatic, right?

It was very much, like, and we've said it, but I'll say it again, this is a job that I can do that I would enjoy, but I'm not like out there for the tits and ass and the fame and the fortune, you know? No, he clearly started out trying to just sell songs. And again, he's very much like a tin pan alley songwriter who was just like, I will vend you a song, which I also find just very relatable as a freelance writer. As a person who vends words. Yeah.

And then he was sort of buoyed in this tide of late 60s, early 70s singer-songwriters where that became just like the dominant mode. And there were a lot of them. Yeah. Because he got his start, like you said, like writing songs for other people in the very early 60s, like 62, 63. Yeah, he wrote songs for like people like Silla Black.

Yeah. A lot of British kind of like Northern Soul type singers. Yeah, Jackie DeShannon. Dusty Springfield. Hail that moon in the sky. It's interesting he wrote songs for women first too. It's like they're all these kind of love

songs, these like torch songs. And they're all really good. They're all really bittersweet. and have this strong emotional pull to them. I didn't know any of these songs were Randy Newman songs. And I was like, wait, these are all songs that I love. Yeah.

It's crazy because that's not the kind of song that he writes for himself. No, but it's like, I feel like it's like the first time I found out that the letter was an Alex Chilton song. You know, by the box tops where I was like, I've heard this song a million times. I love this song.

I had no idea it was Alex Chilson. That was in the box. It was in the box. Just that like people had like a, like the previous trend. Yeah, that they were trying to get in on like Northern Soul and like, you know, kind of Motown, end of Motown type stuff. And then you have sort of this singer-songwriter, you know, authentic musician. What do you think, I mean, this is kind of more of a macro question, but I am curious.

Pretty sure has pointed out that I somehow like, don't know anything about the 60s and honestly not much about the 70s are there until you get into like punk because then I'm like, okay, I know this stuff. But what do you think it helped increase the appetite of the audience for this shift from, you know, just sort of like Motown and like, you know, people writing songs for other people into like, oh, the Bob Dylan's and Neil Youngs and like I wrote my own music. I've got to tell a thought about this. I mean, I think it was music labels pushing that narrative. And I think Bob Dylan... So they just, they decided.

Yeah, but I think it was like this shift from like Brill Building type of group songwriting, which obviously continued to happen through the 60s and like a lot of those Mamas and the Pappas and Birds albums and stuff are obviously all like, session people. Yeah, I think there just became this sort of shift towards like auturism basically. Yeah. I mean, do you think that had anything to do with just like like the whole sociocultural shift of like the late 60s and like hippie and summer of love

and like the whole thing of sort of like shying away from like you know things that were deemed in authentic yes but again it's like some of the things that then they were selling is like this is the you know once they started selling the hippie stuff it immediately became like bullshit commercialized stuff and the birds were a packaged band you know the whole laurel canyon scene was sort of a thought up in a record label right even though it was also somewhat organic. I think it's like some of these scenes were somewhat organic and then somebody cashed in on them. So I do think there were a lot of guys in Los Angeles who wanted to be songwriters

and they were trying to write and sell songs and then just gigging all the time. And one thing I learned pretty recently that I'm obsessed with, I really identify with this was just like the journeyman songwriter who just gigs at like whoever will take them. and, you know, treats it like a job, like a regular job. You're not a rock star. You're like a person who clocks in every day and writes some songs and then, like, plays music for people at a bar or something. Sing us a song, you're the Pianman.

Piano Man is about Los Angeles. It's about Koreatown. Oh, really? The piano bars in Korea. Yes. Sing us a song, you're the piano man. Sing us a song tonight. Isn't that insane?

because I always thought it was a song about New York and New Jersey, obviously. Now I love it even more. I love it so much. Billy Joel was in Los Angeles trying to make it as a songwriter, and he gigged at a bar in Koreatown that I don't think was called Koreatown yet. It was still called Midwilshire, Midwilshire. Yeah. But it's in Korea town.

It was a bar that was like a bar where businessmen go after their stupid day at the office. And then Billy Joel is sitting there being the people. piano man. The microphone smells like a beer. Producer Dylan says it was called the executive room bar. Right. Like it's perfect. It was called the executive room bar. When I was in my 20s

and you probably remember Molly, like that still existed in Korea town. Like we would go to those like piano bars and like... Well, I think Korea Town still has that kind of, what I love about Korea Town is it does have that kind of like early 60s feel about it. The whole vibe of like this was once like

the bustling center of town, and now it is in a different way. Those people to me, too, it's just like people who gig for a long time, who are used to playing for like a crowd of drunks, a crowd of crazy angry people, a crowd of people that aren't even paying attention to you at all. Yeah. But I don't think that was Randy Newman's experience at all, right? And this is something else I wanted to ask you. First and foremost, no offense to Randall Newman at all.

I say this is the utmost love. but like an unlikely aesthetic figure to be a rock to be given a 10 album deal by the label like we'll get to his

like mainstream phase because that to me is the funniest part but so let's just go to it his first album his childhood friend Lenny Warranger

who's a pivotal figure in music which also I believe the father of the sisters that were in that dog oh yeah he teams up with him in Van Dyke Parks

he mentioned earlier to put out his first album in 1968. It's just self-titled Randy Newman. First of all, this album's a bit insane compared to the rest of his output because it's like so crazy orchestral. It's very orchestral. And yeah, I think it's part of this kind of movement

towards orchestral pop after pet sounds. Right. This very sort of luscious, overproduced type of music. Right. And Van Dyck Parks had worked with Brian Wilson. Yeah, I mean, I think it all goes back to like the wrecking crew is who kind of. kind of created this sound. Randy Newman is 24 years old here.

He looks like... He looks like he's never been 24 years old. He looks like a dad. To my point, why him? And then on top of it, this album bombed. They like... The label was like, we will buy back your copies. Bring them back and we will give you a different vinyl album,

which is like so insane. Yeah, I mean, I think it's also like labels don't know what's going to do well, they want to hook a little bit. They don't necessarily want like genuinely the American songbook, you know? I'm so poisoned by like Craven capitalism that's like been allowed to like, you know, become its most efficient self thanks to technology. Whereas like before like they would do this kind of thing where they would be like, okay, like we like Randy Newman's music. He's interesting. Let's give him a chance. We'll put out like a couple of albums and grow him as an artist. Right. No, I know. That's what's crazy is thinking about the idea of like somebody's

album bombing and they don't just like lose their career. They get like more chances. I do also think that like talented white guys get get this deal a lot more. And I do think that Bob Dylan made it so that every record label was like, we need a Bob Dylan. We need like a genius who will, yeah, who the kids will like. But it's like, yeah, you have to remember these record labels are being run by like old out of touch men who hate kids. They don't know what the kids are going to like. And when they try to give them things, they're like, yeah, eat this garbage.

Like, we don't know. That's kind of like this podcast, honestly. I also don't know what the kids are going to like. And they're not going to like this. Yeah, but it's like, to a certain extent, they're scouting things that seemed popular, like the doors or whatever were an actual band that played and got... Yeah, that had an audience.

That had an audience. And they were like, okay, the kids like this, let's give them a deal. You know? Randy Newman, the idea of a bunch of hippies, like sitting at a Randy Newman concert and being like, all right. It's very funny and hard to imagine because like he was always the sort of from another time guy in the way that a lot of nerdy guys are like, if only had been in his time before I was born where I belong.

But he also wrote, Mama Told Me Not to Come, which is like the most 60s song, the most capturing the vibe of like the scary party. And that's Three Dog Night made that song famous, right? Right, and the Three Dog Night version of that made it famous. His ability to write in character voices and in other people's voices made him really just sort of multifaceted. It's like he could do a lot of things. That's a good time for us to play the Silla Black song you chose. Because I think this is pre his first album, but I think it, A, you can hear what.

what we were talking about before of what a good songwriter he was in terms of like the bittersweet love song. Also probably why he was given a lot of goodwill. I mean, he's not just some rando who like put out a bad, not about it. It's a good album. It's not a bad album, but a poorly received album. He probably had a lot of goodwill in the industry considering he was a very successful songwriter for other people already. So here is I've been wrong before by Silla Black. You are listening to a music and talk episode. where full songs and talk segments live together in gorgeous harmony only on Spotify. Guess what?

You can also create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor, Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm slash music and talk. That's anchor.fm slash music and talk. That was, I've been wrong before, performed by Silla Black, written by Randy Newman. What a goddamn song. It's really gorgeous. I did not realize Silla Black was discovered-ish by John Lennon. This begins a trend here. Brandy him and very famous in England, very beloved and famous in England.

I think what he had going for him also is he was clearly very good at networking and making people like him. And I do think that's like a huge part of it. Who can relate? Who can relate? I mean, it's like he's such a studio musician. He's such like he could just have been like a background. figure, you know? I feel like he could have just been a producer and a songwriter. Nobody else does what he does. No. I mean, I think we should play off this first album, The Single, because this is not

really what we get into knowing as like classic Randy Newman, but it's a really beautiful song and also has some really wild and interesting. It's been covered. A lot of his songs have been not just like officially performed by other performers, but like just covered. And there's some funny versions of this one. Yeah, and that feels like a big 60s thing, too, that like a song would come out and then there would just be like 10 covers of it to see if some other people could cash in on a song that's popular. Totally. Like memes. It's like memes. It's just like memes. These were the original memes song. Randy Newman is the original memester. I mean, not no. Randy New meme. This is, I think it's going to rain today by Randy Newmeam. That was, I think it's going to rain today. I mean, like,

doesn't it just already put you like, I'm like, where's the movie? Because this is a movie song and I need to know what's happening in the movie while this song is playing. Yeah, I mean, it's hard because it's also like the Randy Newman sound now is so closely associated with soundtracks. Totally. I do think his music was always very influenced by soundtracks. Yeah. I mean, film composer. Yeah. And like you were saying, very influenced by Gershwin and Porgy and Bass. and stuff like that. I'll get to my larger Randy Newman theory as we continue.

Love that. This song, I have to mention, which I did already, but has been covered a million times. My favorite version is probably the Nina Simone one. And I think it's going to rain today. But the one I find the most interesting

is the UB40. Version. Have you heard the UB40? No, hit me. It's like what if Randy Newman was reggae? That answers the question for you. What if he's already reggae? Yes, he's spiritually.

He's spiritually already reggae. Get ready for all my thoughts. Rolling Stone said of this that it had the mood of a bitter longing for affection. And to that I say, Whomst can relate. I say it's a bad thing. It's relatable. But anyways, it didn't get good reviews.

Record Mirror said that his LP as a singer was produced by Van Dyke Parks and consequently was a mess, choked by Parks' ambition to have pop music sound like classical music. Ouch. Although this album did get him a fan in one Paul McCartney, who apparently called him up to say how much he loved it. Well, Paul McCartney is another fucking consummate songwriter who just knocks him out day and night.

That to me, I think, is the thing I really am impressed. pressed by with somebody is someone who's like, Randy Newman and Paul McCartney are both so not precious about songwriting for two people who have written some of the most fucking incredible, indelible songs. And I think it's like, to do that, you have to be not precious about it. You have to be like treating it like a job, kind of. And I feel like everybody really noticed that about Paul during the Beatles documentary. He's just the one who clocks in and it's like, okay, I wrote five songs last night. Like, you know, everybody else is a little bit, like, like in their own world.

And he's very much like, we got to clock in and write songs, guys. Right. It's not going to do itself. That's producer Dylan on this show, trying to get me to do my job. Not everything's going to be the best song you ever wrote, but you're not going to write any good songs

if you're afraid to fail. And it seems like Randy Newman and Paul McCartney are both just like not afraid to try stuff. That's very true. That's a really good point. One thing I like couldn't get a sense of and like it's interesting because like, he starts doing interviews.

He's, again, like, Melody Maker and, like, other British publications start covering him from the beginning. And he's very much, like, I don't think I have the personality to be a singer. Like, I think he's very self-aware of what his vibe is. And yet, he keeps doing it. So I'm always wondering, like, was this something, like, he deeply wanted to do, like, be both a songwriter and an artist performer? or was someone sort of goading him? I mean, I think he probably wanted to because I think if he didn't want to be on stage,

he could have, again, had just like a very successful career as like a session piano guy or something. Right. I think it was also just a particular time in the early 70s when they were like, we're going to give you a bunch of weird guys. Yeah. Weird guys are hot right now.

You know, Bob Dylan, I think, made it completely possible to be like, look at this non-traditional rock star. Like, look at this guy. who looks like a smart guy from your college, he's the biggest musician in the world now, you know? Producer Dylan says we used to be a weird guy society. Arguably, we still are a weird guy society. Just maybe the weird guy has...

Weird guy has shifted. No, we're not a weird guy society too. I mean, I think... The weird guys make podcasts. We are... The podcast is the Weird Guy Society, for sure. But yeah, I mean, I think also just in film, it was like this time when suddenly...

the movie stars are like De Niro and Pacino and Shelley Duvall and people who are this like non-traditional type of movie star I feel like Randy Newman falls into that it's like and people where you're like I wouldn't have thought this person would be the most charismatic person alive to me but through their songwriting

and stage persona they are totally and definitely we'll see with Randy Newman that like once he hits his stride which is, you know, after this first album. And also he gets kind of like, he gets a couple of boosts, which are he arranged that Peggy Lee hit, Is That All There Is.

Is that all there is? Which producer Dylan has noted in The Dock, one of my favorite songs ever. Thank you, Producer Dylan, for your work in this doc. Deeply, ironically, dark in the way a lot of Randy Newman stuff is, even though he didn't write the song. Right.

Feels very part of the Randy Newman milieu. Sure. The extended Randy Newman songwriting universe. And then in February of 1970, Harry Nielsen puts out Nielsen sings Newman, which I think was a kind of a boon, right, for Randy Nune. It was a boon for both of them because they were both kind of like beloved in their scene, I think. I think it was like everybody in L.A. liked them. The Beatles

liked them both. Yeah. You know? But it didn't necessarily translate into sales, even though it was like the people everyone agreed are like the songwriters, songwriters. Yeah. Brandy Newman played piano and Harry Nielsen sang the songs of Randy Newman. Let me ask you a quick question. It does seem like the overlap between men who like Harry Nielsen and men who like Randy Newman is pretty much just like a black circle.

What is it about, am I pronouncing Harry Nielsen rule? Oh, it is Nilsen because it was Nilsson-Schmelson. Well, everybody, once again, I don't know how. how to pronounce things. No, we'll just keep it. And I'm happy to be honest with my audience about my shortcomings, which is that I don't know how to pronounce a lot of words, largely because I was a shy kid who didn't talk to people. And also because this is a blind spot for me, leave me alone. What do you think it is about Harry Nelson and Randy Newman? We're like, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, maybe you are one of these guys spiritually. Well, I kind of am one of these guys.

However, I did get sick of these guys in L.A. in the 2000s because everybody was too into Harry Nelson. It's like... Yeah. I think there's a thing also where people are like, this thing is underrated or underlisten to or undervalued. And I'm the person who like gets it, especially if it's something that wasn't popular or didn't sell a lot at the time. Yeah. And then gets reissued or something or gets pressed in a music magazine that makes people be like, we're all listening to this album now. There's a period in L.A. where everybody was listening to...

to Nilsson, I see the gentleman from Utah, Fleetwood Mac Tusk, and like Neil Young on the beach. I think it's just, yeah, people like that kind of cocky, fucked up phase of L.A.

Right. I like all that kind of post-hippie dream stuff. I mean, I think that's also where Randy Newman live. Do you think there's like an appeal of these male singer songwriters there, like, lack of a better word, a bit schloppy or whatever. Yes, absolutely. I used to dislike Billy Joel,

and that was part of why, because I was like, I need my rock stars to be like a little bit hot. And then at a certain point, I realized that like Billy Joel's whole appeal and thing is that he's like, is the schlubby weird guy. Sure. And then I was kind of like,

that's fine too. But it's like, yeah, I get it that it's like, some people are intimidated by like Bruce Springsteen because he's so hot. So hot. The way was probably paved a bit by Simon and Garfunkel, we must say. I hate Simon and Garfunkel so much. What is wrong with you? I have ears.

I've heard their music. Producer Dylan also chiming in. You're both. Are we both Paul Simon haters? You don't like Graceland? No, let me talk fucking shit about Graceland. This is one of my favorite things to do. Put aside the cultural appropriation or whatever.

It's not the cultural appropriation. He literally crossed the apartheid picket line to go make Grace Land. And his friend Henry Kissinger told him he should. Moving on, back to Nelson and Newman, where we actually are talking about. Nelson and Newman, this album, not commercially successful, critically successful. Robert Crisgow gave it a B-plus. He enjoyed it. And I think, like you said, it kind of like helped both their careers in a way. And then we get to 12 songs.

Tell me a little about 12 songs. That came out in 1970. That's kind of a song cycle. He starts doing these sort of character songs. Written from the point of view as characters, you mean. Yeah. Which I think is probably a skill he developed as a songwriter, writing songs for people like Silla Black,

where it's like writing from the point of view of other people and other characters. Totally. I also think, like, from reading and listening to like 100 interviews with him, he's very intelligent, obviously, like, maybe like almost too intelligent. And it doesn't seem to interest him to write straightforward from the perspective of myself and I'm in love or I've been left behind. Yeah. He's interested in like society and culture and inhabiting people within society and culture that he's interested in. I think that appeals to me too because I think, like, as a writer, I've always been someone who's like, I'm not interesting. Like, other people are interesting.

What's interesting is me writing about other people. We should unpack that at some other point. I know, right? But it is also, like, I have thought about it a lot, especially recently, and been like, oh, it's because I'm writing about myself through writing about other people always. Absolutely. It's impossible to write about anything without including yourself in it. I understand the Randy Newman urged. to be like, I'm not that interesting. I don't want to write 100 songs about what it's like to be me,

Randy Newman, the songwriter. I want to, like, know what other people's life experiences are like. But I think this is the beginning of Randy Newman's great project, which is like we talked about the Great American Songbook a bunch of times already. Yes. But this to me is what differentiates Randy Newman from the other kind of 70s men who are kind of writing about their own lives and about getting divorced and having long weekend, you know, lost weekends and stuff like that.

And even Steely Dan, who are writing about like the record industry and how fucked up everything is. And they also do character songs. But it's kind of about the milieu. Randy Newman has a really specific goal with all of his songwriting. And it is to depict America. Yeah. And he has a very strong, clear point of view about America, which is that it fucking sucks. That's why I love him is because that's what his.

work is about. It's like this project about the American experiment that is very just, just sharp and cruel about sort of all the deceptions that go into the American dream. What song do you want to hear off of this album? Let's Burn Down the Cornfield. Oh yeah. That song's kind of about sex, right? Who can say? I mean, they're all like, this is his like, this is by far his, fuckiest album. Fuckiest, yeah, horniest. Yeah. This is the only album that I would be like,

this is like the horned up Randy Newman album. Which is what everyone wants to think about as a horned up Randy Newman. Let's Hear Let's Burn Down the Cornfield. That was, let's burn down the cornfield. Yeah, you know what? I was thinking I was listening to it. This is like a proto-Nick Cave song. It's very Nick Cave.

It's definitely the most like Leonard Cohen-y adjacent. It's also, there is like a side of Randy Newman, which is the mama told me not to come side. That is also reflected here that's kind of like swamp rock. Yeah. Which is also very New Orleans influence. I believe he works with a lot of the same people that probably Dr. John was working with in L.A. Yeah. He lived in New Orleans like a big chunk of his childhood.

He was born in L.A., but there was like a 10-year span. I think he lived in New Orleans with his family. And I feel like that just explains everything about Randy Newman, because it's like when you go to New Orleans, there's so much of this type of piano music, this type of like, you know, Fatswall or early piano rock is the dominant form there in many ways still.

And in New Orleans, they have a real, they're very, I mean, not perfect, but, you know, they care about preserving the musical culture and the musical traditions. And the musical traditions are directly the influence of the American project of colonization and slavery. So it's like the musical style reflects the subject matter, which is this sort of southern gothic stuff about how fucked up the American South is.

And he starts just kind of going into this direction of like contrasting the genteel music with the fucked up stuff. And this to me feel, this song, I just feel like it's just kind of horny, but there is something very like Southern Gothic about it. The like let's burn down the cornfield. Just the image of a burning cornfield is very intense and powerful. So even though it's like a fuck song, it also feels political. Yeah, totally.

Just through the imagery. Randy Newman's so fucked up because it's all like, we are going to get you so comfortable and then say the most fucked up thing we can possibly say. And then you're like singing along and you're like, what am I singing? There's a song on here that I found very interesting, which is Suzanne. It is, from what I can tell from the perspective of if I'm being generous, a creepy stalker.

It seems like a flasher maybe. Or like a rapist. A rapist. Like honestly could be a rapist and it's been written about it. I think it's a rapist, yeah. Which is like really wild character to him. body. And it doesn't come up in like, um, the discussion around rape music. Because there's a lot. There's, you know, there's, there's a long, long history. Here's my new theory.

Randy Newman is the first horror core rapper. Wow. He is watch out grave digas. It was first Randy Newman. He, uh, walked so you could run. I did a horror core mix recently. And I love horror core. But a lot of it is just like rapping about the most fucked up things. you can think of obviously, right? And like rape and murder and all this stuff. And when I was listening to it, I was like, oh, it's about depression. They're not murdering people.

Everybody's sad because of like institutional poverty in America. And that's what this music is about. Is that what you think Suzanne is about? I just think it's like it's about the fucked up side of everything. It's about the dark corners of the human experience. and it's not just trying to like push buttons. Like it's not like trolly to me. None of his stuff feels particularly trolly ever to me.

Yeah. Because it does just sort of inhabit these dark, fucked up places. And I don't think anyone would ever say it's endorsing it. We're in this place with music where it is like people and art and stuff where I think people are like, I need something to tell me what to think about it. Literally. And like I can't, I cannot hold two thoughts in my head. new ones doesn't live here.

Right. Or like if something is depicting a bad character, it must be endorsing it. It's like, I feel like it's almost never doing that. And depiction is not like just endorsement. But I think this is the type of song that makes people insane because you can't just say like it's bad or it's good.

It's like it's making its point. Yeah. This is like a pre-Polly by Nirvana type blue printy song. This is the album that to me is like, the most close to being, the characters that are embodied are, again, not him, but they are very like specific, sort of like more opaque types of people.

Whereas when we go on, it gets more and more satirical and more and more like commentary on larger swaths of society. And these seem to be more embodying an individual and their sort of like weird thoughts or whatever, which I think it's interesting that like that was 12 songs, but he doesn't really go back there. He just keeps kind of getting more and more broad

and not in a bad way. Yeah, for sure. And maybe it's just like he became interested, he becomes more interested in these sort of, yeah, these cultural moors as jumping off points for songs. And he has a bunch of themes he just returns to over and over again. Yeah. And one of them is the delusion of dumb white man in America.

He was the original liberal elite. Robert Criscall loved this album. He said it was a perfect album and gave it an A-plus. Rolling Stone also really loved it. This album was very critically beloved. Again, I don't think it was commercially too successful, but it really got the attention of the press. And, you know, I think his fans grew.

Like, didn't Bob Dylan also end up becoming a fan of Randy Newman? Yeah, I mean, again, I think all the songwriters loved him. All the songwriters' songwriters were like, this is our guy. Yeah. He doesn't seem like he has the same kind of like demons as some of these other guys that might have gotten in the way

of just sort of like building a career. He's just fucking plugging away all the time. Yeah. The phonograph record magazine was like, Randy Newman looks like a kid you used to know in high school, the one who always read Scientific American and got A's Intrig,

which has nothing to do with the fact that he plays piano in a way that suggests a stripped-down version of a New York orchestral piano stride style generously filled out with evidence of the proficient assimilation of several dozen pop schlock rock cabaret supper club idioms and polished off with an overall gloss that suggests a strung out recreation of Gene Austin. I was like, man, they really nailed it. Yeah. He does look like the guy in your high school that read Scientific American, but then he's like, oh, he's like a math nerd who plays

music. He does kind of look like a science teacher. I mean, again, that's what it is. It's just like he's not presenting as even Bob Dylan was like wearing a big hat and some scarves, you know, like you had an aesthetic. No offense to Randy Newman, but Bob Dylan was hot and Randy Newman is more just like a guy. You kind of said this before, but 1970 and then going into like 71, 72, this is really the rise of the autobiographical, but Randy Newman wasn't autobiographical, like singer-songwriter figure, right? that like, we respect so much that you both sing your songs and you write your songs. How very cool.

It's the auturism, too. It's like the farm to table. Like, this person wrote a song and now they're playing it. And a studio didn't come in the middle. Label didn't have to mediate it, even though they probably did, you know? Right, right. But there is this sort of like cult of the singer-songwriter built around a bunch of people. And then I think it gets displaced pretty quickly by a cult of band.

I think then rock bands like Flewwood Mac and the Eagles sort of crush the singer-songwriter thing a little bit. Because that's kind of happening in 1970, 71, 72, right? Like, it's very much the Beatles. Black Sabbath.

There's just so much shit going on. You've got the like orchestral pop, you know, the folk in orchestral pop stuff. I just think it's like you can see the sort of 60s turning into the 70s in Randy Newman because he is this guy who starts out making this like high orchestral pet sounds type pop. Sure.

And then he kind of goes all the way down into the gutter to make this kind of like swamp rock. And then it seems like he kind of bridges the gap between the two. It's like he never gets so far up his own ass that he forgets to have like a hook and a song. Yeah. Which again, I think it's like Paul McCartney. It's like he never, he never strays so far from song structure even when he's getting experimental in a way that Van Dyke Park does obviously, you know, actually try to make classical music. Like, Randy Newman is very wedded to like A.B., A.B., whatever, song structure.

Totally. He doesn't really experiment with the music that much at all. What song should we hear off Sail Away that came out in 1972? Oh, my God. Well, this is the one where I'm like, I don't know what song we should listen to off of it, because a lot of them are pretty edge-lordy. We can just talk about the song Sail Away without necessarily playing it. Do you find Sayleaway to be edge lordy because it's about slavery? Yeah. It's super edge lority because it's about slavery.

But again, it's like, it's not edge lority with no purpose. It's not just trolling to troll. All of his music that's sort of about American racism and how fundamental it is to like the American project and how fundamental slavery is to not just the American project, but American popular music. Yeah. It's just, it's so fucked up. It's a song about promising this like new world to Africans as you, as the slavers are putting

them on slave ships. It's like so unbelievably fucked up. I also just understand that someone could have a reaction to this song of like, I can't deal with this, you know? Totally. And some of his songs too. It's like, yeah, you are still like a white man commenting on this. Yeah.

In a way that might just feel for people. who've been around a lot of this, the same as being around the racist Southern white men who talk like this. I'm just going to read you what he said about it. He said, I had this idea of a slave ship and a sea shanty, this guy standing in a clearing singing to a crowd of natives. These people in my songs don't know they're bad.

They think they're fine. I didn't just want to say slavery is awful. It's too easy. I wasn't doing roots. And then he talks about Bobby Darren covered it, but he missed the point. But then he says, Edda James did it

and I guarantee she knew what it was about absolutely she got it. Well, that's what I'm saying like the Edda James version of this song is fucking insane. Maybe we could play that version actually. Yeah, we totally can.

That would be great. Because again, I think it's like he writes these songs to be dispersed. It's like they're kind of like seeds. He like writes them and then he seems like he loves having them reinterpreted. And yeah, it's like a lot of his songs

you can absolutely miss the point or if the right person sings it nails it. and hammers home the point he's trying to make. I think his songs are so interesting because it's like who's covering them can completely change the way they feel. Yeah. And it is a little bit

like sometimes like the message versus the messenger. Okay, let's hear Sale Away performed by Edda James. That was Sail Away performed by Edda James written by Randy Newman. God, I mean, that's the thing. It's like when Edda James does that song, it's so powerful.

Totally. It's satire, right? It's like it is Jonathan Swift. Is I not Jonathan Swift? Yeah, yeah, Gulliver Shavles. No, it's satire. And here I found a quote. Thank you so much. My brain, just a smooth brain. Because I'm trying to think like who are some other, like, there's so few political songwriters. And it does, you know, obviously that was like. Especially ones who rely on satire, which is like a really nuanced form of delivering a message, especially when it's couched within me. music because that's rare. It doesn't happen, right? So I think people are unable, they're just unable to parse it. Here's what Randy Newman said about the song Political Science, which is also on Sail Away. He said he didn't want to write songs like Tom Lehrer who wrote like actual political novelty songs. He was like conscious that he didn't want his songs to be fucking novelty

songs like full on novelty songs. You know, even though they kind of like get close to that sometimes or they have just like concepts. Yeah, but that's not usually his like MO. No, but he says, I write a lot of those songs that are meant to be funny in a form that listeners take the people in it more seriously than literature. I think he's very conscious of sort of like these are like the big messages that are in all the great American literature, right, about just how fucked up America is. And just what I was saying before, it's like he puts it in this kind of almost easy listening

mode and then he's talking about just like everything is so incredibly fucked up. Yeah. He really captures something about New Orleans, which is like really the cradle of American popular music. And is that because of slavery, because of African people being fucking kidnapped and, you know, taking this place and trying to preserve musical traditions and those traditions combining with other stuff in New Orleans. And it's all a cosmic gumbo, as they say. But it's just like everything in America,

it's like this fucked up facade and all these bugs underneath that are poisonous. And all of his music is like, I'm forcing you to look at these bugs. And again, then it's like at a certain point in his career, he starts doing just straight up children's music. And it's very confusing.

But it's also like he's similar in that way to like Shell Silverstein. That's a good parallel. Well, Shel Silverstein's another, like, 70s kind of just, like, cool guy who wrote a lot of songs for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, some of which are, like, novelty songs, like, my favorite freaking at the freakers ball. And then wrote a fucking famous children's book of poetry. Hickle me, pickle me, too. I think there are a lot of people working in these kind of multiple modes, because, again, it's like whatever, if you're a writer and you're

just trying to sell stuff, you will do whatever you can sell. So if you can sell some, like, arcane political satire, you will do that. And then if you have to sell a children's song, you will also do that. Totally. And people like Randy Newman and Shell Silverstein and I think even Harry Nelson were very aware of that. Totally. You know, there's like two other songs on here that I think are interesting because, like, they're doing the same thing, you know, that all his songs do, but maybe on like a less edge

Lordy topic, but, like, lonely on the top, for example. Oh, it's lonely at the top. That song he wrote specifically with Frank Sinatra in mind, again, there's irony in that song. Like, it's about being like, I'm lonely and I'm the biggest singer in the world. And, like, Randy Newman thought that Frank Sinatra would think that was funny and, like, want to do that. And he was just like, hell no.

You know? We should hear Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear, because that's, I think, a really good song off this album that also had been a hit prior for Allen Price in the UK. But I really like Randy Newman's version, and this is a song almost satirizing himself, right? Or almost like the idea of like, I'm a clown. You know, like, performers are clowns.

I'm like, thank God my like humor and fun gets me in the door and you let me stay. Let's hear Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. That was Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. Yeah, I got to say that's not my fave, not my fave, actually. That one to me is the most kind of Nilsenie and maybe a little too twee for me. It's kind of like, I don't know, I just feel like it's kind of that psych pop era when there were like Sunshine Psychpop with like just incredibly complicated titles. They write Simon Smith on the amazing dancing bear.

Yeah, that does sound like a total, that sounds like a thing that would be in Austin Powers as like a fake song title. Yeah, exactly. It's very, and that British version of it sounds more like that. Brian Wilson of Lerbysh has said that this was a profoundly affecting album for him,

kept him from sliding further into depression and mental illness. He has ranked it as one of his top five albums of all time. Just a little fun fact. for your Beach Boys fans. I don't know if the reviews matter per se, but I will say Robert Criscoe once again gave it an A-minus. It was pretty well-reviewed this album. Now we're in 1974.

Producer Dylan has kind of noted here that like 1974 is kind of an interesting time because the Vietnam War ended in 73. It was really the me decade and we're getting to like the middle of the me-decade. So it's very me-me-me-me. A lot of like Joni-Mitchell. I was a free man in chorus Linda Ronstat Yeah, sort of the end of wood

You're no good. Jackson Brown Such an empty surprise The California sound Yeah Sort of the end of the California sound The California like come down Smooth music

It's smooth uh is what producer Dillon says. And also Kiss, the self-title that's come out, which we'll come into play that a little bit later. Good Old Boys comes out in 1974.

What's going on in terms of like racial tension and race relations in the 70s? Nothing good. Right, sure. I mean, I think it's just

the long fallout of the 60s, which is to be like all the cool stuff we thought might happen is like not going to happen. Right. Nixon is going to be present.

Yes, Nixon is president. Get used to everything's sucking. And then there's a recession. I'm bringing all this up because good old boys is essentially a concept album. It's a concept album about good old boys. Yeah. And it starts with a song with the app, which we absolutely cannot play. We will not be playing Rednecks.

Rednecks is one of the craziest songs I've ever heard in my life. I just remember the first time I heard Rednex again, just like knowing Randy Newman as he is now, as like a, you know, grand figure of Hollywood or whatever, like a beloved figure. This song is so insane. It's about white racists in the South. It's from the perspective of white, a white racist in the South. It's from the perspective of poor white racist in the South, and it has the big racial slur in it a lot. Liberal use of the N-word.

But again, not used in sort of an edge-lordy, like I'm saying this just to say it way, but really interrogating the sort of casualness of the use of it among a certain type of poor white southerner who thinks of himself as better than black people even though he is a dumb fucking idiot. Absolutely. Even excluding the liberal use of that,

or like I could say it was not in there, if this song came out today, would the argument come up of like, this is condescending towards the poor white racist? You know what I mean? Like, because there is that sort of street. now in pop culture where there's like a villainization of the liberal elite. You know what I mean? Oh, that it would be like received as like Hillbilly elegy or whatever? Yeah, I just would mind

curious. Because I think also this song, what is so smart about it is it doesn't, it doesn't simply condemn the Southerners. It also condemns the Northerners who think they're better than the racist Southerners, but who are in fact just. as racist. Totally. And I think Randy Newman, I do think that although he writes from a character point of view a lot, this song to me feels very clearly informed by his real life experiences living in New Orleans and being around this type of person. It is just like I think the way racism functions is obviously different in different parts of the country, but there is this tendency among liberals to project all of the racism and all of the badness of the badness of

America onto the south. Totally. And to be like, and onto the poor. That's where they're racist. And onto the poor. And to be like, that's where they're racist. These poor white hillbillies, like, they're the racist ones. And then it's like, we live in California, which is unbelievably segregated, unbelievably

extreme in terms of the divide between the rich and the poor and extremely divided among racial lines, obviously. And in California, we have all these dumbasses that are like, we're not racist. we are progressive and that is also insane. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think just, again, like Randy Newman's whole project is sort of like taking on the hypocrisy of American culture. Interrogating American culture through using its most traditional,

most classic-classicalized forms of music. Do you think that any of these other sort of like autos at the time were engaged in their own version of that project? Or do you think it was still very much like, this is about my life? I mean, I just think Randy Newman is so on his own trip about this compared to other people. I think other people interrogated hypocrisy

and sort of moral hypocrisy. I think a lot of Leonard Cohen stuff gets into that at a certain point about, you know, war and racism and anti-Semitism and stuff like that. there's anti-Semitism as mentioned in this song also. He talks about like a New York Jew. But I think Randy Newman, his thing that's so powerful is that it's like he's taking down the sort of white every man who is the protagonist of American history. Yeah. This is a broad way to say it. But like it seems like Randy Newman uses his music as a vehicle for commentary instead of a vehicle for

self-expression. And maybe commentary is what he wants to solve. self-express, you know, and that's great. Yeah, I think for him, commentary is self-expression. And it's like he's also written a lot of songs that are not cultural commentary. He's written a lot of straight-up love songs and like straight-up songs about desire and torch songs and stuff like that. Some of them are from character point of views that aren't necessarily him. It's not just an intellectual exercise either, I think, is what makes it work.

It's like... There's even emotion in these commentary songs. Right. And like, if somebody heard, again, just like if somebody heard Rednex and was like, fuck this. Like, that is completely a legit response to this song also.

And I think things that require context are obviously not well made for the streaming age. Concept albums about American racism don't necessarily

break down into like bite-sized portions that make sense outside of the larger context. Okay, so Lester Maddox was the governor of Georgia at the time and he was like

a known racist. his 2008 New York Times obituary headline described him as a quote-on-quote White's only restaurateur gorgeous way to be commemorated. He basically ran his campaign on a segregationist platform. Again, very cool, very awesome, very great way to live your life. Anyway, he went on the Dick Cavett show in 1970,

which is about four years before good old boys came out with the NFL player an actor Jim Brown. Appearance was basically this major primetime heated debate on race where he's like literally saying separate but equal type stuff while

he's seated next to this like prominent black man and what ends up happening is the governor walks off the set in the middle of taping. So when I say Randy Newman is writing from a specific place and time it's like this is

the specific place and time. And I think it's also like he's clearly not blackpilled. He's clearly not just like a nihilist about all of this stuff because if he was, he wouldn't think that he could like get people's opinions to open up by writing songs about it. Totally. He's coming from a position that like I'm going to force people to think about things that they don't necessarily want to think about that are like uncomfortable to think about. To sort of pivot, there's like a really good, I don't really know what it's about to be honest,

but it feels a bit like a love song, which is guilty that I really like. And there's a really good Bonnie Raid version of this song. It came out the year before, actually. I love her. And her voice makes it like just so, so incredible. You chose Louisiana in 27 or Mr. President have pity on the Working Man. Which are those songs do you want to hear? Let's do Mr. President have pity on the Working Man, which is about Nixon.

Okay, gorgeous. Really, the president that launched a thousand songs. This is Mr. President, have pity on the working man. That was Mr. President, have pity on the working man. Whose perspective is this song from? I mean, this one feels almost straightforward to me. Right. This one feels like it's like the working class plea.

Maybe it's a little bit naive of them to think that Richard Nixon is going to do anything for them. But that's still him occupying character. Obviously, Ranyan is not a working class person. this album had a lot, you know, a lot less, I think, controversy than we think it would, but it has going on. However, like, Greil Marcus wrote about how critics maybe perceived it one way because, again, critics are paid to think about music

and look at nuance and all that stuff. But then he sort of contrasted that with, like, what it was like to go see this performed live and see Rednecks perform live. And he was very disturbed by, what it felt like to watch an audience, like, sing along with this song and laugh at the people in the song. And I don't know, I thought that was an interesting, it was an interesting take. Like, I think it maybe it didn't occur to him until he saw it performed live and saw it taken

in by, like, a huge crowd, like, how it was actually being interpreted. Yeah, and I think, like you're saying, it's like, if you, if there's a slur in your song, even no matter what you're the purpose of you using it for and dramatically. You see a huge audience of white people singing it. It's gross. It's awful. You can't control the satire and we see this happen so much with like TV shows where people are like Walter White is cool, you know?

Right. Where you're trying to like condemn a character and present a character who's like fucked up and people are like, this is an endorsement. You portraying this is an endorsement. What's telling, too, of like, how fucked up society was during this time and Continuation Bee was like, the song that people try to get banned of his is not this one. It's short people, which is off, I believe, the next album. Oh my God, that's the next album. Should we move on to that album and talk about short people? Yeah. This didn't bother enough people. That's the real punchline

is that the songs about, the songs about slavery and racism, people didn't really, like, like pay attention to what they were about or understand them. The song, that's a joke song about prejudice. Just bigotry, yeah. And like just overall bigotry. Can we play it? Yeah. So this is off of Little Criminals that comes out in 1977.

This is Short People. That was Short People backing vocals by Glenn Fry of the Eagles. Oh, yeah. Short People is a bop, a certified Randy Newman's bop. It's a jam. Compared to some of the other Randy Newman songs, this one is like you could play it at a party. It depends on the kind of party you're at.

Yeah, sure. I guess it also, it almost went to number one, and it was blocked by Baby Come Back by Player. And the Bee Gees staying alive. Randy Newman grew to hate short people because he feels like it is his most sort of like straight-up novelty song that got played. He thought it was like a chipmunk song, he said.

Yeah. I think he was shocked that people just, interpreted it straightforwardly because I think sometimes maybe he overestimates the intelligence of the American music listening public. Someone threatened to murder him over this song. He was like, it was obviously so ridiculous to me that somebody would be murderously angry at short people that didn't even occur to him that maybe there are people that like feel that way. I mean, it really is a telltale of that we've been hurtling towards idiocracy for some time that there was people that were like, how dare you?

malign the short community, the short kings in the community. This song would destroy society now. If the song came out right now, Twitter would lose it. I have to say Baltimore is a goddamn gorgeous beautiful song. It is a beautiful song. I mean, he's a beautiful songwriter.

That's the thing. It's like all these songs are fucking good. It's so weird to me, though, it's like he's writing this song, Baltimore, about basically how Baltimore is kind of like a dangerous and shitty city to live in, right? That's basically the gist of the song. But then it's like so emotionally evocative.

Well, it's a real dry run for I Love L.A. That's like the trick of I Love L.A., right? It's like, yes. But then in the lyrics, it's like, no. Yes. But he does start writing a lot of like, he writes a lot of place songs. Maybe he just literally throws a dart in a map and it's like, okay, Baltimore.

Yeah. Or it just sounded good within the, he wrote the song and it sounded good. How about, can we just talk briefly about the song Sigmund Freud's impersonation of Albert Einstein in America? Yeah, another song with a really long title. Also, just like a bananas-ass song. This man was definitely doing drugs. I have to, I mean, I don't want to malign you, Randy Newman. And when I say definitely, I mean, I don't know.

And I'm assuming. Look, I'm not saying that everybody who hung out with the Eagles in the mid-70s was doing, like, Absolutely super heroic amounts of cocaine. Yes, but like earmuffs dad. I've done cocaine, babe, plenty of cocaine. Doesn't make you write a song about how this is Sigmund Freud impersonating Albert Einstein being stoked to live in the land of the free. That's some other drugs. I think that's just pure Randy Newman.

I think that's just he's getting high on Randy Newman. Yeah. On being Newman. Yeah. It's a really weird song. I have to say I love it. it's absolutely bizarre. Kathleen is a nice song.

Kathleen, it's kind of a love song, but then also he says something like I always loved Irish girls. I read something here about this album where this is a thing where I wanted to point out, I don't know about Paul McCartney because, again, I have not watched

the Get Out documentary Get Back, but Randy Newman didn't sit around and write songs. Randy Newman only wrote songs when it was time to make an album, and he would literally go to his office, sit in there until he wrote 12 songs, and then go home. He, like, really treated everything. He said it in multiple interviews, like, I only write under assignment, right? And the assignment was making an album.

And I found that very interesting. Like, it is kind of to your point of, like, this is a job and, like, I'm going to get it done. It's interesting that he doesn't just, like, sit around and, like, get struck by inspiration and sit and jot down some chords. It seems like he always was making art for the purpose of commerce. Like he is clearly an artist, wants to make art, but he does come from this kind of like Brill Building songwriting factory type thing where it's like... But then is it incapable of actually writing pop music?

He's like, you know what? I'm going to write songs for commerce. This is a concept album about a racist man in the South. Here it is. Going to sell gangbusters. This is going to top the charts. In 1974 or whatever, that was a thing that maybe could be the number, you know, like... But it was.

was extremely like a tiny loophole in time where that maybe made sense. And just albums, just an album's economy versus a singles economy. Like he does write a lot of singles and I think if he were coming out now

he might be a novelty songwriter because novelty songs are made for streaming are made for performing alone. This album actually, even though it was like really commercially successful, was not as well, reviewed. Robert Criscoe, who seemed to have loved everything Randy Newman did up to this, only gave it a B-plus. Rolling Stone was like these songs aren't even funny. They lack bite.

The critics love him until he does sort of dance with commercialism and then they're like, this is not for us. Well, that feels very correct too. It's like the critics love somebody that they can be like, he's just for us. He doesn't care about making money. And something I've learned about all of these 70s guys that I think at one point I thought kind of were happy to be like the cult figure is that I think they did all want to be big successes. Yeah. I mean, who does it? Like, I think Warren Zvon was like, I think they all did want to be Bob Dylan and they were frustrated if they couldn't be Bob Dylan. And I'm sure Randy Newman was frustrating to people as somebody who just kind of kept his head down and kept working always. And every time he puts out an

album, it's like he's a little more famous, but he never gets like, yeah, he's never becomes like a huge giant superstar because that's like not his thing. Yeah, totally. Let's talk about, before we get to the 80s, we do have one more album. But it's almost the 80s. It's 1979. So there's like music's shifting, right? We've got Tusk, as you mentioned before, comes out in 1979 by Fleetwood Mac. Donna Summer's Bad Girls comes out.

So we're still sort of the tail end of disco with like that and Super Tramp. What else? Michael Jackson's off the wall. Pink Floyd's The Wall. A lot of walls happening. ACDC Highway to Hell. It's an interesting time for music. Yeah, you have a lot of these big kind of mainstream things happening

that are so far removed from like what Randy Newman is doing. Right. How does Randy Newman react? Well, he makes an album called Born Again in which he's on the cover wearing kiss makeup. Except the kiss makeup makes dollar signs around his face. It's a statement. It looks like Joker makeup. Well, this might have been his like jokerification album.

Yeah, this is his This Notes for You, which is the Neil Young song about turning down commercials and about making music for the love of it and not to make a lot of money. But it's so on the nose about that. Like the song, it's money that I love. We're just occupying the mind of someone who only cares about money, which, okay. And then there's like a mean song about John Travoltauble. Yeah, like I wonder if this is also just the product of being around like record executives in the 70s and like... It's just the targets are a bit weird, right? Like the story of a rock and roll band is a mean song about ELO.

What did ELO ever do to do? Right, which in them Jefflin produces next album. I think it's also like, yeah, it's like you're making fun of something that's actually is too specific to you at this point, which is just like... Right, it's like a bit navel-gazy. But it's like I love when like Steely Dan make fun of. the record company guy, you know, a lot of people were making whole albums about how much they hate the record company guys at this era.

It doesn't not work. You know, Pavement's Crooked Rain is basically about being in the band and the music and instrument's awesome. I mean, I think they're also a little bit in this position of like, I think Pavement also occupied this like, we're the critics' favorite and we'll never sell out, but also like later on being like, um, we should have sold out. Yeah.

Cut Your Hair could have been in a million movies. You know, like... They called up Nigel Godrich. It just... It didn't end up working. They just... I mean, I think it's just like... I think Randy Newman

clearly was like not against selling out. He's very interested in like that commercial and art intersection. But this album feels a little bit like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too

and be like, I'm going to make like a... I'm going to make what the record company guys are telling me I need to make and it's going to be my usual like sarcastic dick about, you know, all of this, but this one feels a little...

This was my least favorite out of the, like, the albums of the run from 68 to 79. I do like how druggie it is, though. It's so, like, it feels just very, like... In what sense? In the sort of meandering, like, what are we doing here? Like, why are we writing a song about John Travolta? The cute little chicken shit boots on. Right, just like trying things, trying things and maybe they don't work.

People were really mad at disco. And Randy Newman seems like somebody who wouldn't necessarily like turn his nose up completely at disco because he's so interested in like popular American art forms and disco is really one. And I think a lot of these rock guys were like, oh, we'll make a sarcastic disco song. But actually it is like still a disco song. It's still a good actually underneath. Yeah, like a good disco song. Which is what I'm saying about like there's a bunch of eagle songs that are like

really good disco songs that I don't think Don Henley thought they were making disco, but it's like Randy Newman is not doing the thing you might expect him to do, which would be like, fuck the groove. I'm going back to like doodily doodily music.

You know, it's like there are a few times when he attempts to make some party music and I always just think it's funny. Do you think pants is a good example of that? Yes, and I love it. I love pants. Okay.

Pants is an interesting song. First of all, God bless that there's just a song called Pants. Gorgeous. Love it. Me personally, because I just think the word Pants is funny. Yeah, like I like the idea of just kind of free associating songs about like whatever you're thinking about.

Like the family guy, the family guy episode of Randy Newman. Randy Newman. Yep. Just sits there all night and day singing about what he sees. It's a little mean, but it's just like he's sitting there and he just sits at a piano all day like observing what's in front of him and

singing about it. Reaching for an apple. Gonna take a bite. Nope, nope. Okay. I mean, he seems like he has a good sense of humor about himself too. Like, Randy Newman, I don't think I've ever heard

Randy Newman be like, how dare you make fun of Randy Newman, you know? Well, let's hear pants. So we get the sense of this album. And I think it's a good, you know, him sort of taking to task, like the rock star who's like, oh, I'm hot. This is pants. That was pants. Wow. I love that song. Also, that's a punk song, Yassie.

Imagine it played three times as fast. With the cowbell? Yeah. Okay. I'll give it to you. We're going to cover it in our Randy Newman punk band. That's a fun baseline to play, I'm sure, fast. Melody Maker called Born Again Randy Newman's worst album to date. It was not well received critically or commercially. This was maybe his, although it did hit number eight on the Pazin drop poll for 1979 because Robert Criscow really loves Rainy Newman. But yeah, it didn't do that well. And apparently Randy Newman was kind of surprised about that.

Right, because I think this was his attempt to make a commercial album in some weird way. And then it was like he tried too hard. But I think there's a dry run for the next few albums, which he will succeed. Let's talk briefly about ragtime. this whole time Randy Newman is making music for film and TV right alongside his

solo work. Yeah. I mean he starts doing it around the time of performance but he he does it a little bit here and there. Ragtime I think is the first thing where it's like score by Randy Newman and it makes perfect sense. Why? Because he loves Ragtime. Oh right. Because he loves Ragtime music.

Ragtime is a genre kind of And this is a movie based on the big E.L. Dr. O novel. Right. Directed by Milo Schormann. It's a score. Right. It was nominated for two Oscars? Yeah.

It was nominated. I don't think he won. For Best Score and Best Song. And Producer Dylan has noted, this is the film that established Rainier Newman as a top Hollywood composer. So then we get to Trouble in Paradise. January, 1983.

He takes kind of, you know, a little three-year hiatus before he puts out his next album, I guess maybe because he was busy with ragtime. This is the album that has arguably Randy Newman's most famous song besides the Toy Story song. I love L.A. We love it. Which I think surprisingly at the time was not a hit, right? Well, I guess it depends how you define the word hit,

but it was not commercially like charting. Go on. That's all. I mean, by the just like the most stringent definition of a hit, I think at that time, of course, like, I think it's changed and like, you know. Well, okay, 1983. Let's set the scene. 1983. The city of Los Angeles, the 60s are over, the 70s are over. Now it's the 80s.

And what are the 80s? Like a reboot, a reboot of like the 50s, right? Totally. politically, spiritually, musically, spiritually, you got new wave. Of course,

chronicler of our times, Randall Newman, decides to write a song called I Love LA. For his sixth album, Trouble in Paradise, his last album was a flop. His last attempt to make

a big commercial album kind of making fun of big commercial albums as the music business becomes this big commercial behemoth. was a big flop. Nobody liked it. Nobody wanted it.

No. He goes back into the lab with a pen and a pad and comes out with the song, I Love L.A. in 1983. I'm one years old.

I'm recorded at the Warner Brothers recording studio in beautiful North Hollywood, California, where I grew up. I Love L.A. is a huge hit. It's a local hit,

obviously. but then in 1984 it becomes used as the anthem for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Interesting. And that's when it becomes a huge worldwide hit associated with Los Angeles in the mid-80s forever,

completely and utterly missing the point of the song. Yeah, I was going to say, an interesting case of a complete misuse of the song. I work with, I'm in an Olympics, LA, we're against the Olympics. You sure are.

You like figure skating at home, bitch? Shut up, because Molly is not down. Shut up. Guess what? We've got a huge housing crisis and we shouldn't spend any money on any goddamn sports mega events that they used to do

a lot of bad shit. But they did a lot of bad shit in 1984. This is just like, I love L.A. is the perfect Randy Newman song because it is a fucking hit. It's a great. song, it is an incredible Los Angeles song, and like all

incredible Los Angeles songs, it's unbelievably full of hate and spite for Los Angeles. All the best Los Angeles songs, this song... Talk about the canon of great Los Angeles songs. People in Los Angeles love to

cheer for things about how Los Angeles sucks. We are the only city in the world that is like, yeah, we fucking suck. That's right. Also, other people are not allowed to talk about how we suck. We get to talk about how we suck. You just nailed the fucking nail with the hammer right on its head.

Yes. I have seen at a Steely Dan concert, the part in my old school where they go, California tumbles into the sea. That'll be the day I go back to Annandale. When they say California tumbles into the sea, everybody loses their shit. Everybody cheers for California tumbling into the sea. for an earthquake to destroy Los Angeles. We cheer for that. That's right.

That's what I love L.A. is. If you listen to the lyrics, it's like born in the USA. If you've ever listened to the lyrics of this song, you know it is a satirical song about how Los Angeles is a fucked up place. Let's hear it real quick and then continue to talk about it. So as we're talking about it, people have been heard of the lyrics. I'm so excited to just hear it right now. This is I Love L.A.

God damn gorgeous, beautiful song, I Love LA. Just quickly, what about the fact that that's Christine McVee and Lindsay Buckingham on backing vocals? It makes so much sense. What a use of them to just hide them in the back of the room. I mean, also, again, with the like, oh, you don't like disco? Just kidding. Guess what? Absolutely. The best cocaine in all of history, I'm just guessing, that all of these people were doing.

Yeah, that shit came straight from Columbia on the airplane, dropped it right off at the stew. Someone just explained to me that it was actually, Felix Biederman was just telling me that actually the Coke was really bad, which I didn't know or believe, but then he explained in detail why. The Coke was really bad. Yeah, the Coke in Los Angeles has always been bad, not that I know from personal experience,

but it's a place that is not known for good cocaine. Assumed Fleetwood Mac were on the good Coke, but it also makes sense they were on the bad Coke. Speaking of Bad Coke, mid-80s in Los Angeles, I love L.A. I Love L.A. is a satire of songs, about cities. It's a satire

of like New York, New York, all the like Frank Sinatra City songs, you know, Chicago. I love it.

That's your bottom dollar, you lose the blues in Chicago. There's a terrible one. L.A. is my lady. L.A. is my lady. The worst Frank Sinatra City song about L.A. Yeah.

There's some very bad songs about L.A. This is the best song about L.A. No, the best song about L. and my estimation is under the bridge, but we can agree to disagree. I knew you were going to say that. But I'm also saying like this does,

okay, I love L.A. does fall into the same tradition as Californication to me, which is another song that when I finally listened to the lyrics for the first time, like last year. And then Akitas is a great poet of our time. We believe this.

This is why we are friends and why Randy Newman will not drive us apart. But I also think it's like the peppers, much like Randy Newman, it's like people think of them as being California boosters, but when you listen to the music, it's all about what a fucked up weird place it is and how we love it.

Totally. Because it's such a fucked up weird place, the second song on this album is called Christmas in Cape Town. And it's about South Africa and apartheid. Until a darling, don't talk about things you don't understand. I tell a darling, don't talk about something you don't know anything about. It is the same song. You know, like all these songs are about how these places are fucked up.

And I love L.A. The part that nobody ever, I guess, was listening to when they decided to make this a 1984 Olympics anthem is, yeah, look at those mountains. Look at those trees. Look at that bum. He's down on his knees. Did they keep that lyric in as they made this the official song of the 1984 Olympics? Isn't that crazy as they were sweeping homeless people? and sweeping...

God, it's so dark. Sweeping every young brown and black person in sight with like gang injunctions. It's so dark, but it is the 80s Los Angeles thing, which was this kind of like fascist, like, okay, back to the 50s, all this like rabble-rousing and protesting about all the inequality and racism.

Like we're just going to literally pretend that never happened, which is what we always do, throw a big party. on television about how great Los Angeles is. But again, it's like if you've ever listened to the lyrics of this song, you would never be like, this is a boostery song. It is a critical song. Okay, let me push back a little.

I think that it's both. Because I think that there's a genuine sentiment in it. Like, it's truly like, I think, how people who are from here, you and I feel like, we deeply love this place. And there's a deep love for it. And some of even the lyrics are sincere, you know, Listen, rolling down Imperial Highway, yes, Imperial Highway is maybe the worst highway.

You're right, though. It's like all the streets he names are like the shittiest streets in Los Angeles. And like, we love them all. We do love them. I love it. Victory Boulevard, shout out, no-ho. That's my strip. That's where I grew up.

Best thrift stores. Love it. We do love it. That's what I'm saying. There's like a sincere thing of like... He's also making fun of like Rubes, who are not from Los Angeles, who just sort of were like, yeah.

Yeah, look at the mountains. Look at the trees. Yeah. Sixth Street. I mean, truly the worst, one of the worst places in Los Angeles. You love this song because of the line. I mean, obviously, yes. And the video also made a representation. Well, the video made a big impression on me, obviously. I just, like, to a point where I didn't even realize that I bought these, like, red sunglasses the other day.

And then I was like, oh. What about the Kardashian cover? for Chris Jenner's birthday. Gorgeous. It's gorgeous. Other L.A. icons that share are breeding. It is also just like Randy Newman does love L.A. As he should, it's better than being a Jew in the South, I imagine, to be, come out to L.A. and be Randy Newman.

Randy Newman had it good, babe. Yeah, real good. And I think also just like what I love about this is it has those kind of big sense like we were talking about. But again, it's like he doesn't stick to his thing. He tries stuff out. It has like experimentation and it's a little modernized. It's an 80s song. I have this whole theory of this entire genre.

My brother and I came up with this thing called Glass Bricks. Shout out Lambe. Every time I see Glass Bricks to this day, I think of you. Yeah, but it's like he and I would just talk about it a lot because it just represented like adulthood to us in the same way that the big nasty redhead in the video. I was like, that's what an adult woman is like, I have to become this somehow. Glass bricks are like people from the, we made like some mixes, but it's like musicians who came to LA in the 60s and 70s and the hippie era and then stayed through the cocaine era and now it's the 80s and they're trying to make hits in the studio, like the music studio system. It includes things like all of Don Henley's solo career.

Basically when all these guys turn to synthesizers. Right, with varying degrees of success. But some of them, you know, who were willing to go there and willing to do the, just like the expensive sound, that 80s thing too, of like we spent the most money on this studio and it's like the most expensive synthesizers and that's going to make the best music. Yeah, there was like four fair lights in the whole universe and like they would get their hands on one for like $20,000. Right, like Jeff Porcaro is the drummer on I Love L.A. He did a bang-up job. Yeah, it's just all these, like, studio super guys.

Well, funnily enough, you know this song was caused by Don Henley. Go on. Don Henley said to Randy Newman, Everybody's writing L.A. songs, people not from here. You're from here. Why don't you write one? Wow. So shout out Don Henley for doing that. Also, the video that you love was done by his cousin, Tim Newman,

who also directed all the videos for Zizi Top. Oh, I love the, wow, this is like my whole sexual identity was formed by this person. Now that you say that, this is your sexual orientation. My sexual orientation is Zizi Top videos and I love L.A. That's 100% true. I was like, that's how you be a, slap that on the old Tinder profile. That's how you be a hot adult woman. You have big old hair, some sunglasses, and like frilly socks and high heels.

That's how to be hot. Well, you know, what I think about how to be a hot woman is that you have to be a hot woman is that you have to be mentally ill, because that's what I was taught by the songs of the 90s. Well, that's just a bonus. BPD. Gorgeous, gorgeous girls have BPD.

I'm like, songs in the 80s taught me you just had to have legs and know how to use them. Perhaps a sort of like gorgeous little miniskirt that's bleached. Let's talk about some of the other songs on here because, like, I know,

obviously I love LA is the most known song. Yeah, other than that, it's kind of like a Randy Newman album. Well, I don't know, babe. What about Mikey's? Mikey's is an unhinged song. This is like where he took the like, I'm going to get with the program

or whatever of synths and stuff. Yeah, you want to play it actually? Yeah, I think we should play it because it's truly an unhinged song. I don't think it's bad. No, but it's like, I appreciate the experimentation. It's like I like all the McCartney 2 stuff that's just weird synth stuff.

Go, just play it. Okay, this is Mikey. That was my keys. I love that song. I think it's great. It sounds like a Spark song. Sparks is also a blind spot for me. Not in a bad way. I literally don't even know it. I need a bands playing. I mean, again, another L.A. Sons of Los Angeles, absolute weirdos.

I just, I like when Randy Newman yells at me. I don't know. I think he has such a great voice, too. I think that's something we haven't even really talked about yet is he has such a great cadence. and I just love people where you're like, you can always tell it's them. Yeah, I mean, listen, as we're both diehard Kitas stands, we are known to be fans of a unique singing voice. That's what I'm saying. It's like if there's somebody where I'm like,

hey, I always know if it's this person. Yeah, totally. I like that. And he has that kind of like, he still has that kind of like swamp rock. There's something a little bit New Orleans about his delivery to me always. I do love hearing him in interviews because he has a cool voice.

I think maybe Randy Newman music is best in smaller doses. And the immersion that I've done perhaps had a negative effect on it. I'm going to say anything if I listen to only one thing because it's like I make these mixes where I do a genre at a time, you know? And by the end of doing it, I'm always like I never want to hear this genre again. Oh, that's interesting because I will put on 90s. Andy's music for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and never tire of this. I think maybe what it is, Molly, and we'll get more into it. We've already talked about it a bit. So it's like maybe the current that goes through Randy Newman, which is why some people love him so much and why maybe it's eligible to other people, I might be one of the people it's slightly eligible to, is that it's so cerebral and so it's John Updike.

yeah, it's great, which is awesome. It's so cool. I was talking to a friend today who's like a big Randy Newman fan who's like, you know, maybe in his 30s, like a young songwriter guy. And he was saying, you know, I just love the juxtaposition of the like really pleasant music with the really like caustic sentiment, which I love the idea of that. I think it just really for me boils down to the fact that I'm not a like a great American songbook.

You know, bup-da-pap-pap. And that's all. So if the vehicle was a bit different, I think I would be more into it. And it's just like a personal taste thing. Sure, yeah. Where do you fall on jazz in general? Have not gotten into it. Okay.

Well, that's your dad phase. You got to get into jazz next. I know. It's coming. No, I mean, I have a jazz dad also. So it's like I have, I do love the Great American Songbook and the fake book and all that kind of stuff. My dad looks like Persian dirges. Well, that sounds like.

sounds cool too. There's definitely times where I'm like I cannot listen to like, like I don't listen to like Gershwin very much on my own free time. But sometimes I hear it on the radio and I'll listen to it and be like, yeah, it's good. It's fucking good. What radio station are you listening to that Gershwin comes on? Okay, got it. Is that the USC station? I think so. It's 88.1. Sometimes I listen to K-USC. That's the classical music. I listen to K jazz. It's like one of the only stations with like DJs. Well, this album has a couple of other bright spots that I think are funny, which is my life is good, which is really, in terms of, like, hilarious character studies, I love that one where it's, like, it's really unhinged about a guy, like, who's rich and famous and insisting that he has the best

life ever to, like, the Lady Doth protest too much and, like, brings in randomly an interaction with Bruce Springsteen. Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's like, this is like, this is very glass-bricky also, and in the canon of, like, Steely Dan songs, like, glamour professional. just songs, yeah, songs about like LA dickbags that a person like Randy Newman encounters in the music industry in the 70s and 80s. Or in the PTA in his neighborhood, which I think maybe what this was, came from. He did an interview. Remember how we talked about like how he wasn't listening to contemporary music. It was like Ray Charles, the standards, and that's it.

Around this time, he's like, yeah, I got a cassette player. So now I listen to Hollenotes, Rod Stewart, Soft Cell. And Rick James's Street Songs. Oh, I love Rick James' Street Songs. I know, but you know what's happening with Rick James' Street Songs and Randy Newman, what's going to happen in the future? Go on. It's going to make this man think he can do a rap song,

which we haven't gotten to yet, but it's about time. That's right. That goes to show, like, I think Randy Newman has this reputation as kind of like a moldy fig, which is what you call someone who's like a jazz fan who hates new forms of jazz. Oh, I love this phrase. Yeah, it was like used in maybe the 40s or something.

It was like people who only like trad jazz and were like, we hate bebop or whatever. They call them moldy figs. But I feel like you can use it for any genre, for people who like hate when a genre changes or when new people come in. And they're like, we like the old thing. I'm a moldy fig. Well, you don't want to be one though. I don't want to. But unfortunately.

And it sounds like I even though I kind of think of Randy Newman as this guy who's like, I never listen to music from beyond like 19. 50 or whatever. He's not. Yeah. He clearly listening to soft cell. That's cool as fuck. That is really cool. And I imagine it had to have some effect on the synth usage that he did since that was like... That's what I'm saying is like I think some people were like absolutely not.

No sense. We love guitars. There was this weird prejudice against synths or like drum machine stuff of like synths have no soul, which is obviously bullshit. But I also think people like Paul McCartney and Randy Newman, who already wrote songs on the piano. If I love when people try things,

what's the point if you're not going to? I love Neil Young's trans so much. I like that artists go on and try things. I'm not going to necessarily like the music that they make, but I'm going to like the experience. I'd rather they do it than if they just make the same thing over and over again. I just feel like you're damned if you do. If you make the same album over and over again,

people get mad at you, but if you try things, they get mad at you too. So you have to like just... You just have to do what your heart wants. Go with God. This album got great reviews. New York Times did mention he can't sing, but that's not news to anybody.

They can't. He totally can sing. What are they talking about? He sings conversationally. As a singer, Mr. Newman, is literal more than a croaker. He has minimal range. He can hardly sustain his growly baritone

for more than the length of a word conversationalally articulated. He has no shadings of vocal color at all. That's so not true. I think he's a song stylist. I think he is like somebody like Dr. John, where it's like he's kind of playing a character as the narrator of all these songs.

So you think if he wanted to, he has like the range to like really belted out? I think he committed to a sort of character where he kind of sings conversationally. I don't think he ever was trying to be a Harry Nilsen type like fucking singer. And that's why I think Nilsen sings Newman.

It's like if you want to hear somebody really belts some Randy Newman songs, there are lots of other people covering them that have like, but he's a songwriter. He's a songwriter and he's just trying to convey

these songs he wrote. And I love his weird kind of guy at the bar talking to you style. Sure. I mean, you can love it, but you can also admit that he does not have the range.

You're testing me today, Asi. It's like when people say Bob Dylan can't sing. It's like he can sing. He's singing. He's physically doing it. It's like I can play sports. I can do it. I'm not necessarily. You know what I mean? I love a voice. I love a weird voice,

is what I'll say. I love a voice as well. I like an imperfection. We've talked about it. But I can agree with the New York Times. This whole episode is just like deadhead trolls punk. Literally it's true. And I admitted in the sublime episode, I've still, to this day, 2022, only ever heard one Grateful Dead song, and it was the cover by Sublime of... When I was walking in Rubba Dub Square, because they don't know what it is.

I think it's Grovener Square, but I think they say Rub a Dubb Square, which is... That's called artistic and poetic license, babe. Poetic license. Okay, so 1986, just an important footnote, Randall Newman co-writes the fantastic fucking film The Three Amigos with Steve Martin. and Lorne Michaels. I did not know this. Great movie. One of my faves. So long as we've got some time to kill, I think I'll have a beer. We don't have no beer. Just tequila.

What was tequila? It's like beer. Not my fave. You don't like the three amigos? No. I feel like Cocaine wrote that movie. That's why it's so good. I hate Chevy Chase, kind of. I know, babe. You've mentioned that a couple of times. He's not on your favorites list.

He's not on my favorites list. But I love Steve Martin and there's the third one, Martin Shore. Because I love Martin Shore. That's right, babe. Martin Martin Short, shout out to the fucking murder TV show with Selena Gomez. Who I love. Replace Chevy Chase with Selena Gomez. Do a three amigos reboot, you power. Thank you. You solved it. Okay, perfect.

Moving on. Okay, so the next album is 1998, Land of Dreams. Funnily enough, as we mentioned two albums ago and we have dragged the ELO to hell. Now, Jeff Lynn is one of the four there's four producers on this album. James Newton Howard, who's like an old classic guy,

Tommy Lapuma, same. Jefflyn from ELO and Mark Knopfler of Dyer Strings. What is happening? He's always in the cut in the 80s. And Jeff Lynn, yeah, who he made a song. He made fun of ELO on two albums ago. And I called up Jefflin. Called up Jefflin.

He and Jefflin are pretty similar in some ways. Mark Knopfler, your man's has allowed Randy Newman to put out a rap song. It's called Master Man and Baby. B.J. I'm sorry, that song is amazing. Babe, are you okay? I must know. It's so funny.

It sounds like that rapping wolf or like dog wolf from Paula Abdul's song. Do you remember what I'm talking about? Things go wrong. We make corrections to keep things moving in the right direction. Yeah, what if I love that too? What if I also love that? Yeah, I have a soft spot for that. rapping wolf, I won't lie to you.

I just want to point out, Randall Newman is 41 years old when he's delivering this rap. Okay, I just, I want you to wrap your mind and brand around that. I want to you picture Mark Knopfler and Jeff Flynn in the stew while Randy Newman drops his sick verses. This is like MC Scat Cat Core.

MC Cat on the rap so like it. Here's a little story and you're sure to like it. Yeah, I love MC Scat Cat. I love novelty rap. I love when somebody who can't rap tries to make a rap song like Debbie Harry. Yeah, and then this song, producer knows pointed out,

which is a great point out. This song comes on the album, a few tracks off, a song that part of which they used for the Card Talk on NPR theme song for many, many, many, many years, which makes some more great voices. Hello, you're on Carth Talk.

Hi, I have a new Ford Aspire. Boy, I mean, you talk about a dumb name. Well, it aspires to be something better. This is podcast, is Car Talk. If instead of Boston accents, the Car Talk guys were like... Had vocal fry. Two Valley Girls with Vocal Fry. Totally.

You know who else is mentally ill like you? Robert Criscoe. Because... Because he loves it. Crisgow and Gril Marcus at this point are such Randy Newman stands that he can do no wrong. Grill Marcus kind of drags him here and there, which is interesting. Although he does love it. All right.

Grill Marcus is like, how dare you write autobiographical songs? literally, that aren't about characters. This is number 10 on the jazz and pop pole in 1988. Number 10. Let me talk to you about some other albums that came out in 1988. It takes a nation of millions to hold us back, public enemy. Pixies Surfer Rosa and Justice for All by Metallica. Jane's Addiction and Nothing's Shocking.

Daydream Nation by Sonic U. Green by REM. First album. You get a fast car. I want a ticket to anywhere. That's the 90s breaking through, though. This is like Randy Newman's still in the 80s, and he's in the long tail of the long 80s.

This is clearly like a peak, baroque 80s album. And meanwhile, people are making like grunge. Okay, producer Dylan has corrected me. Robert Kisgraw, I do apologize. He did place public enemy at number one and Sonic Youth at number two and Tracy Chapman number three.

Whoa. Midnight or old is Eak into number four to your 80s point. But he puts peer ubu again, justice for peer ubu at number seven. It's a strange time in music. Things are all over the place.

This is Randy Newman. This album beat out, I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen. I'm your man. Well, I'm your man is better. No offense, Randy, but I'm gonna... Sir. That rap song Beat out. I'm your man by Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen doesn't not rap. People who sing

conversationally, it's a little bit like rap. I just want you know the notes that producer Dylan and I wrote on our Google Doc under this song, just say, Prismillan wrote proof that society was not okay at this time. I wrote Suey and she wrote Molly, why did you do this to us? I mean, it is proof that society was not okay, but that's what's funny about it. It feels like you're having a nervous breakdown. This song is ostensibly it's about his childhood in New Orleans. Masterman and Baby J.

I don't know, babe. Prodiginal says he's the Larry David of music and I'm like, that kind of checks out. That's what I like about him. He's a bumbling weird Jew in a sunshine land and he just gets Tanner and Tanner. He said, right now, rap is my favorite

pop style because it's like playing tennis without a net. Though some of the boasting can get tiresome, the best rap lyrics have the substance of real life. I love the group Salt and Pepper and a lot of things by LL Cool J and Boogie Down Productions. He just like me, for real. I mean, honestly, like,

at least he likes it, you know? Like, I would have guessed that he would be, like, a raucist who'd be like, this isn't real songwriting or something. Like, he's clearly very open-minded. And again, like, I do think he's from New Orleans in some ways. He likes sort of like doggerel, like,

culture always. He likes folk styles. So like rap is like a new folk style of music. He's interested in it. I don't think he thinks he's good at it necessarily. He openly disliked heavy metal though. Well, so did a lot of people because they were like, it's not about anything.

I think he probably was like rap is about something. It's like it doesn't stand for anything. There's a really weird Rolling Stone review of this that spends the entire review comparing the Randy Newman to Jane's addiction. I hate Jane's addiction.

Molly, you have to leave. I don't even think we're going to finish this episode. This is like a fight my brother and I get into all the time because I'm just like, ugh, the worst L.A. band. I can't. K. Rock tried. We're just going to keep moving on. I would just say, like, if you have...

No, we're not saying. We're not... Have a hard time with embarrassing front men. Not on the show, babe. This album, I think, wasn't... Again, was not very significant except for me to mention that the rap song. Chris Gow still gave it a B-plus.

like I told you, threw it on the top 10. He's enduring. Now we jumped on a new and much higher mountain called the Toy Story soundtrack. Well, that's what I was going to say is it's like he goes into respectability. He goes from being like sort of a provocateur, if you will.

And then he just makes this huge turn towards respectability and becomes like a mainstream industry titan. My thoughts, like honestly on Randy and Newman in the popular culture understanding throughout his solo music career. I don't think he was that famous. I think Greil Marcus and Robert Criscao were talking

to each other basically about him. It's like if there was Twitter right now, all of Twitter would talk about him, but then if your cousin wasn't on Twitter, they'd be like, who's Randy Newman? Well, he's like Warren Zivan. He was like a rock critic guy's guy. Yeah.

The guys that rock critics were like, I relate to this guy because I'm just also here like toiling. My dad literally lived a block from the fucking whiskey. and the Roxy in the late 60s and all of the 70s. And he does not know who. He was like, Randy Newman, song guy, songwriter?

That's it. That's it. I understand my dad is foreign. No, but it's like, again, I think it speaks to the fact that Randy Newman could have just been a behind the scenes guy also. Like, he's basically a studio musician, a studio session guy who had a solo career. Totally. But there's another world in which he would have just been playing piano on soundtracks,

you know? Yeah. If it wasn't the world where Warner Brothers still did things, like take a chance on weird musicians and spend $400,000 on them even though they never made any money. Right, exactly. And I don't know that he was like, Toy Story is going to be this thing that breaks my career. Because again, it was like, I was a first CGI animated movie. It wasn't necessarily going to be a hit. Yeah.

And he was doing tons of film work before. It's not like this is like his first go. He's been doing it the whole time, especially between 88, which is. the last album. Right, he starts just doing it because that's clearly like where the money is and then he can just

kind of make whatever albums he wants. He does. And also probably at that point I love L.A. is paying the mortgage. Yeah. If all the, I mean, if the Dodgers pay good royalties, I don't know,

and the Kings. I hope I love L.A. pays the mortgage because like it should. They play it fucking everywhere all the time. Yeah, because he, I mean, again, before Toy Story,

like he did the Parenthood soundtrack. He did Avalon, Awakening's the Maverick, the paper. I think it's just like the smart move is to go into children's entertainment. Totally. It's where the money is. That's the place where you can make original songs, right? Film scoring is not often about making original songs in like dramatic films, right?

It's more about, you know, scoring. It makes perfect sense for him. For him to end up writing a Disney song feels like a very full circle thing to his career where it's like he was almost like, yeah, he's like starting. out making fun of these things and then he ends up like really doing it writing a great American songbook song that everybody knows and can sing. Let's hear it. We have to hear you've got a friend in me off Toy Story number one. That was you've got a friend in me. Toy Story is a gorgeous film. It's a gorgeous film. Which one of us is Buzz Lightyear and which one is Woody in this Toy Story?

Producer Dylan says, You're Buzz. Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Woody is like a little more like self-absorbed. That's my vibe. I do come from another planet and I'm like, here are my weird opinions. This is a big deal for Randy Newman, obviously, for his like sort of newish career shift because he doesn't put out another album until like 1999. Bad Love comes out in 1999 when he's 55 years old. He took this like 11 year hiatus to write music for films. I did want to talk just briefly about bad love, because it actually, again, it has a bunch of weird shit on it, like the world isn't fair, which is an open letter to Karl Marx.

About how Marxism doesn't work, and he's glad to live in the land of the free. But isn't it maybe a joke? Isn't it a character song? Even if it is, it's so weirdly specific and hilarious. You know, like an open letter to Carl Marx, even as a character song, is bizarre. There's two songs on here.

One that you put on the playlist, you're dead, but you don't know it. I'm dead, but I don't know it. Excuse me, I said the title wrong. And I miss you that are actually pretty emotionally vulnerable. And from what I can tell, at least I miss you is told from his own perspective, it's a tribute to his, he had gotten divorced and it was a tribute to his ex-wife. Yeah, it's just a straight-up love song. And I do think it's like maybe the people who write through a cynical lens and write through

characters all the time and don't want to ever think about themselves or talk about themselves have a little vulnerable inside core that they've been protecting all this time. And a little aversion, aversion to vulnerability. Mm-hmm. I mean, this is why you like Randy Newman. I think it is why I like Randy Newman. I'm exactly like Randy Newman in a lot of ways, actually. I really avoided ever writing about myself for like a million years.

And now I'm like, you know. We could not be more opposite. I only wanted to write about myself, which is why I was. was never a successful journalist. Well, I didn't want to be one of those. I just felt like there was a lot of like sell your personal life on the internet. And I was like, no, I need that. I want to keep that for me.

But I want to write about other people and like write about myself through, for example, Madman recaps. Producer Dylan says stop looking at me. Just to remind everyone at home, producer Dylan's personal teen diaries are in the library of Congress because of Rookie.com. Oh, that's cool. It is cool. I didn't even want to be like a face on the internet.

I just wanted to be like a narrator like Randy Newman. That's why I'm in podcasting now. This is a, is this therapy? This is always therapy. I am learning a lot about myself. Me, way too hot to be a podcaster and actually still angry about it. This is the medium that I ended up. It's true.

I'm looking at your face right now and I can't believe who would deprive people of this. That's what I'm saying, babe. Can't believe. Actually, my voice is kind of annoying. No, it's hot. Many listeners have pointed out. It's really hot. I also sound like Drew Barry Moore. So I heard myself saying an O sound the other day and it was like so. I had a teacher in high school who was from Georgia because I went to high school in Singapore and he told me I spoke like a newscaster.

He says that people from California are devoid of accent and so that we all sound like newscasters. Okay. Should we play your dead but you don't know it off bad love? We could. We could just talk about it. Tell me about it. It's a song about just sort of like you have nothing left to say. Like your career is established, you're famous, you are writing the same song over and over again. That's what it's about. So this is a very personal song.

Yes. For a 55-year-old man to write after being in the biz for, you know, 30 plus years. Yes. Good for you, Randall Newman. It does make sense that he's taken this big break. He's 55. And then this, you know, when it's almost like a swan song, you know, you're dead, but you don't know it. Well, it's like he hustled so hard for so long.

And then he achieved the thing he'd been trying to do the whole time. And then he's like, what now? Like, I miss hustling. Now we get into like an illustrious career of soundtracks going forward for a while, a bug's life, James and the Giant Peach, meet the parents, Monsters, Inc., meet the Fokkers, a lot of meeting people. Randy Newman did this thing called Faust. Yeah, and I had a friend who put on a production of it in high school. I had a phone call with friend of the show Newman, who was named after Randy Newman's father,

who was an engineer and producer who worked with Randy Newman, about this. And he told me who the cast was supposed to be. And it was just like name after name of like insane stars. Like Mc Jagger was supposed to play The Devil, I think. Like it was like a really cool thing that we were deprived of was the Faust Broadway and musical. Yeah. And it also, again, it makes sense for him to take on theater at this point because his stuff was always very rooted in musical theater. Yeah, it sure was, babe.

He also has like a weird fixation with God, even though I think he wouldn't admit it, which we haven't brought up. But like from the beginning, there's actually some very interesting based songs, if you will. I think he's hiding off the first album, which I really like. God what we've done with what you gave us. God's song Off Sail Away. That's why I love mankind. We'll get into it, dark matter, but there's that, like, super long, great debate song. That deals with religion.

I'm sorry, we're not going to get there, though, until we talk about my number one favorite Randy Newman song. Go on. The monk theme song. It's called It's a Jungle. out here. All right. Can we play that? Yes, a jungle out there.

Poison in the very air we bring. Let me tell you what. This is a goddamn gorgeous beautiful song. It is about Adrian Monk, who is a detective in San Francisco. He has been removed from the, you know, the police that he was, he was an actual police detective. But after his wife died, his OCD really got really bad and he was not able to be a functioning police officer.

So now he's a freelance detective. and I love him. I love Mr. Monk. There's a great version of this theme song by Snoop Dog. Let me tell you, it's a jackal about that you breathe. Do you know what's in the water that you dream? From the episode in which Snoop Dog appears on the show as a rapper named Murder Russ, but like Russ, like the name R-U-S-S.

Snoop Dog does a Randy Newman song? Yeah. Have you never watched the television series Monk in its entirety? It's eight seasons. No, I haven't ever actually seen any of Monk. Babe, get into it. I watched it again in its entirety during the Pennines. Wow.

Okay. Anyways, just to say this song did ruin Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. Now, Randy Newman's minding his business, making Emmy-winning theme songs, doing movies, you know, Cars 3, Monstros University, is really staying in his bag. then in 2017 he puts out what I think is his last original album right but like 2017 Randy Newman is 73 years old called dark matter tell me about dark matter it's existential go on it's about the nature of god kind of like the great debate the eight minute piece of musical theater that pits ambassadors of science against those of religion yeah that has like a gospel type chorus in it which I kind of enjoy Pitchfork called it a stress test for anyone uncertain of whether or not they want to listen to a whole album by Randy Newman

and you know what? That's correct. They did give it an 8.0 in 2017 that they pitched for love this album but I would have to agree it's a bit of a stress test. Producer Dylan, unfortunately for both of us, has brought to my attention that there was also an unreleased song from this album about Donald Trump's penis.

Did you hear about this? No. Yeah. He had a track called Putin, you know, in reference to Oh, yeah. And then Volcher asked him, well, why did you not write a song about Trump if you wrote a song about Putin? And he said, I did write about him. But the language was too vulgar.

It felt too easy. The song was, my dick's bigger than your dick. It ain't bragging if it's true. My dick's bigger than your dick. I can prove it too. There it is. There's my dick. Isn't that a wonderful sight?

Run to the village, to town, to the countryside. Tell the people what you've seen here tonight. The hook was What a Dick Da-da-da. What a dick. That was a thing. Sounds cool to me. You would like it.

See, no problem with it. I like that he cut it because he was too dumb. I don't know if he thought it was dumb. I think he felt it was too vulgar. Maybe rightfully thinking that in 2017, most people don't want a song about Randy Newman's dick.

But who knows? Maybe there was an appetite for it. You did. Molly Lampert's like, me right here, babe. I did. I think it's fine. Let me just go back to your friend Bob Criscoe, who said in Vice Magazine, in Vice Magazine, in 2017,

the only way there'll be a better album in 2017, referring to Dark Matter, is if some genius comes up with one that unifies the Democratic Party in a song from the left. Okay, let me just point out a couple of other albums that came out in 2017, just a few. Lord's Melodrama, Dam by Kendrick Lamar. Control by Siza. Lana Del Rey's Lest for Life. Wax the Hatchy's out in the storm. Chris Gow's in a different zone. Chris Gow is in the zone where

Dark Matter is the best album that came out in 2017. Kendrick Lamar be damned. Lana Del Rey, Lus for Life? Suck it bitch. It's fucking Randy Newman or nothing. It's eight-minute song by Randy Newman about science versus religion. Not Kendrick Lamar.

Okay. then in 2019, I'm really sorry. My notes just say help and SOS, but in 2019, Randy Newman does appear on a Chance the Rapper song. No comment. It's called Five Year Plan. It makes sense to me

because Chance the Rapper is sort of like the great American songbook of rap music. And I say that, just to say it, take it however you will. He's the Toy Story soundtrack of rap music is what producer Telen says. this collaboration is, you know, it's a thing.

Chance the Rapper said he was a Randy Newman fan since he was 13. I presume because of Toy Story, but who knows, maybe he was like bumping 12 songs at 13 years old. The title of the Rolling Stone piece on it is, I totally went off how Randy Newman ended up on a trans the rapper song. Randy Newman did totally go off. Randy Newman did totally go off. He did totally go off.

Longstanding Kanye fan. did not know that about him. We can't not mention that, you know? Yeah. He said that all the stuff I said on the record, I thought of right there in the studio. He freestyled people. Yeah, he's a rapper.

This podcast is here to prove that Randy Newman is a rapper. Yes, with the legitimacy of Randy Newman's rap career. We've demonstrated. They asked him at the end of the interview, the album is near the top of the charts. I hope you're happy with that outcome. And he said, my kids, they were excited. I am happy.

I got a new knee. What more can I ask for? Chance the rapper bought Randy Newman a new knee. We love to see it. Love to see it. We've gotten to one point that's a little bit near the end, but related to your interests, I would presume, correct me if I'm wrong,

the soundtracks for the Meyerowitz stories and marriage story. Two balls. Yeah, back to Bombok. All roads lead back to Noah Baumock. All roads lead back to Greenberg. I mean, this is just straight up soundtracks, right? Yeah, it just scores. I don't know.

I just feel there's something there. Noah Bombach has said that in his pitchfork music of my life brought up Sale Away, he said that that was a record his mom had when he was growing up. And when he was like 35, he went back and bought all of Randy Newman's records. They're all untouchable. I think that tells you a lot about Noah Bombok as a person. Pretty much. We've kind of reached the end of the Randy Newman journey. Oh, what I was going to say is like, do you feel Noah Bombok fits squarely in with the fans? And and base I've described of the white men who love Randy Newman. Yes. Molly Lambert, Noah Bombach, Chance the Rapper. The three greatest. The trilogy. The Trinity of Randy Newman. The Randy Trinity.

Any closing thoughts? Any... Look, I'm not saying I didn't also get sick of Randy Newman doing this podcast with you, but I also really enjoyed it and felt a new appreciation for him, actually. doing it and made me think about all the reasons I ever liked him in the first place. I really enjoyed it too. I find him to be a fascinating figure in music. I totally understand what people like about him. There's many songs that I actually really liked and I actually found myself putting 12 songs on again because I really do like that album. Anyways, speaking of

though, the Holy Trinity of Randy Newman fans, we did gather up a bunch of other Randy Newman fans, apostles, if you will, producer Dylan says. And we're going to hear from them right now, Molly. I love Randy Newman because he can break your heart and make you laugh. He's fearless. He doesn't get enough credit as being a great singer. I think he's the best interpreter of his own material. I like him in the same way that I like bands like flipper or country teasers or the

butthole surfers, all of whom either taunted their audiences to counteract the trend of the times. Just go to the edge of appropriateness to toy with expectations or satirized, unsavory targets. I've been listening to and collecting the music of Randy Newman for over 51 years. I consider him the greatest songwriter of the last hundred years. Many will talk poorly about Mr. Newman and his play-out hits. I get it. But there's so much more. Just for one seconds in your little lives, please shut your mouths and open your ears. It'll do you some good. I've learned to play a few of his songs, and diving into his chord progressions is like a

master class in music theory and songwriting. And I remember feeling like I had to had to defend Randy Newman to other teenagers. It was a losing battle. Between Family Guy and Toy Story, Randy Fandom was sort of placed behind a uniquely millennial eight ball. But oh my God, those records, that early 70s reprise sound, this like warm, dim, sunny morning, Los Angeles music. Nobody can convey what he conveys with that little boy, Ray Charles, Fats Waller,

rolling piano thing he does. And he was one of the most bitter subverts of his time. And for the better part of the 70s and 80s, I'd say popular music's fiercest satirists. It's often unknown to his audience, or I imagine some of the people who are paying him. The way his understated humor can live seamlessly along more serious topics

reminds me of other songwriting giants, like John Prine or Bob Dylan. It's been my passion to disseminate his work and work towards making sure his musical legacy remains intact for future generations of music lovers. Funny, smart, sad, grotesque, observant, like kind of boring-looking, but very weird feeling. And if you felt this way as a person,

his music is this like laser-guided arrow to your soul. When the greatest baseball team in the world, the Los Angeles Dodgers win a game at home, who do you hear? You hear Randy Newman. And every single time I hear those first few chords hit, I feel it's work grace all the nerves in my spine. For a brief moment in time, everything is better than just fine. And I think he was a pioneer in a certain form of songwriting.

And he's punk rock too. So that's why I love Randy Newman. Wow. Can I respond to this? Yes. That's what we played it for you for. Okay. Are these people who just called in?

Yeah, we put out like a call. We scoured the internet for fans and all the men who love Randy Newman came right running forward. Okay, that's what I was about to say is I did notice there were no women in this call. Are you surprised? We did not discriminate. These are the people that love Randy Newman that came forward. I think what I'm realizing is that I love Randy Newman. Maybe I hate Randy Newman fandom.

That's common for a lot of acts, I think, that we've discussed on this show. Yeah, I think maybe I just don't like the type of like, oh, he's a smart person's songwriter, because I think that's dumb. And also he's from L.A. He's not, like, that smart. He kind of, like, comes at it with this dumbness, which is what I like about him. I saw a review that said intelligent but not intellectual, which I thought was a good way of saying. It's very L.A. It's, like, accessible. It's, like, smarter than you'd think, but it's not, like, leading with like, look how smart I am.

It's kind of like... Yeah, it's like this podcast. Dumb bitch, who makes good points. Dumb bitch, who makes good points. I think this is maybe the longest conversation two women have ever had about Randy Newman. We've probably broken, like, the bent to the universe, like curved the universe.

I mean, this is probably also something about me that I tend to like a lot of things where I don't realize that all the other fans of it are like in cell men. You're like, I'm not like other girls. I love Randy Newman. I literally. I mean, no, I'm just like, I like Randy Newman and Fight Club.

What does that say about me? I love Fight Club. Okay, great. I got an argument with Alex Papademus about this already because he was like, Fight Club is for bros. And I was like, I'm the bro. Yeah. I'm the Fight Club, bro.

It's a critique of masculinity, just like Randy Newman's songs. Also, just a quick, what's the reverse of a shout out? A shout down, a shout in? Yeah, a little quick shout down to Alex Papademus, who literally never text me about. Well, Molly, this has been a joy and a pleasure for me. I agree. I have had a great time. I mean, I love talking about Randy Newman with you. I love talking to somebody who has a different opinion than me about something. It'd be so boring if we all just love the same stuff exactly the same way.

I don't dislike Randy Newman. Some of his music isn't for me, but listen, like, mulling over it for the past few hours with you, Molly, I do think he was punk. It was, it was, super punk to do a lot of the stuff that he did, and especially to deliver it in the container that he did. So you know what? I'm down. I have a new appreciation for the I Love L.A. slash monk theme song guy, which is kind of the space he occupied in my mind before this. I'm definitely going to listen to I Love L.A. in my car. It's such a great song to drive to also. Much like Under the Bridge. Much like Under the Bridge and Californication. Oh, any, any wrote.

I actually heard Suck My Kiss on the radio the other day and thought of you immediately. What a fucking great song. My brand. Molly, what is the last song you want to leave our listeners with? I would love to play a cover of I Love L.A. by OMC. The New Zealand band. Oh, how bizarre. Yes, exactly. L.A. is bizarre, and we love it.

Okay, this is OMC. How Bizar. How bizarre. Doing I Love L.A. Come back next Thursday for a new episode of Bansplaine. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplaine, only on Spotify. Our guest today was Molly Lambert. Follow her on Twitter at Molly Lambert. Huge, huge thanks to the Randy Newman mega fans you heard on this episode.

Gary Norris, John Poeta, Silas Height, Max Easton, Graham Imel, and Gregory Stahl. Bansplain is a Spotify original show. This episode was produced by my short people that got no reason to live, producer Dylan, a.k.a. Dillon Tupper Rupert, and edited by Nico Paolela, with help from Casey Simonson, Tari Miller, and Shannon Cornett. Executive producers for Bansplaine are Gina Delvac and me, Yossi Salon. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagarsa in Los Angeles, California.

Special thanks to Philippe Biggie Jimino, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper, and the television program, Monk, starring Tony Sheldoo. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bansplain, only on Spotify. Are you vaping? I was smoke weed, just regular analog weed while we listen to the Randy Newman rap song, because that's how we have to get through it. Oh, yeah.