New Release: Every Time It Rains

Randy Newman, Isaiah Dixon, Michael Jackson, Scott Wiley, and me

Randy Newman can be divisive. I see that.

Ask my friend Brian, who once knowingly instigated with me thusly, “Paul, the problem with Randy Newman is…”

Ask Maryland State Delegate Isaiah Dixon who, in 1978 for apparent lack of anything more important to do, introduced a law that would make it illegal to play Newman’s hit song "Short People" on the radio1. It turns out not everybody understood the song as satire. Some took it literally and genuinely thought Newman was a bigot about short people, rather than considering that maybe Newman was trying to say something about the absurdity of bigotry.

Ask the Oscars¹, who nominated Newman a whole lot before he ever won (for what most would consider not his best work).

Or ask Newman himself. In deliberately writing from the point of view of unreliable narrators, Newman was out to push buttons. To raise questions and eyebrows. I suppose he could’ve written a song called “Bigotry Is Lame, Right?” and gotten all the virtue signaling points. But he approached (attacked?) the subject in a different way. That’s art. That’s artists. In Newman’s case, he loves unreliable narrators. Shifty folks. People nobody would accuse of being reliable witnesses.

Like the ultra-racist Southerner in “Rednecks” or the dirty old washed-up man in “Shame”² or the slave traders with Madison Avenue chops in “Sail Away” or even just a regular ol’ white voter when Obama first ran for president in “I’m Dreaming”³. You can’t say that Newman was fond of the safe route with his songwriting. You can argue the results, maybe even the intent, but not the guts.

It probably doesn't help matters that he writes and sings the songs in first-person. He doesn’t hide behind third-person or omniscient impartial reporters. He jumps into the person and goes from there.

Plus, with Newman, what you see (or hear) is not always what you get. He’s not always direct….again, no mega-hit called “Bigotry Is The Worst, Man!” His approach is sly and snarky. Indirect and roundabout. Maybe even willfully obtuse. This type of his songs could probably be criticized for being condescending, over-intellectual, New Yorker-core. (But so could a lot of smart things.)

He also writes gorgeous heart-rending songs that are, by contrast, pretty direct and heart-on-sleeve⁴. In that regard, he has a lot in common with singer/songwriter/iconoclast/junk collector/human sore throat Tom Waits, who has often lumped his songs into two categories: grim reapers and grand weepers. Newman’s categories might different, but the principle—a writer who writes two types of songs, a beautiful one and a wilder one—remains.

While we’re talking Waits/Newman similarities, both have voices that are, well, less than traditional. Neither would get through to Hollywood on American Idol. They’re not easy on the ears, so to speak. Both are widely considered polarizing. There’s that divisiveness again.

I, for one, love Randy Newman’s voice. I fell in love with it for the first time while watching his episode of the sadly-cancelled PBS show, Sessions At West 54th. His voice is a sorta froggy, drunken spin on a white and lazy Ray Charles. A mumbly matter-of-factness. A slurring bartender. I love it (sung in the cadence of “I Love L.A.”)! Most people do not.

People do like to hear other people sing Newman’s songs, though⁵. You get a better sense of the songs’ melodic gifts, the lyrical turns, the harmonic interest. To this day, hearing Sarah Mclachlan sing “When She Loved Me” gets me right in the heart. In cases like this, it’s almost like he’s a limited dancer but a brilliant choreographer. When he hands the song over to the real dancers, it’s awe-inspiring.

Which (the “someone else singing” part, not the “awe-inspiring” part, duh) brings me to my point:

I’m releasing the next edition in my covers series, my version of a song that Newman originally wrote for none other than Michael Jackson to sing. It comes out Friday on any/every streaming service. But you, dear esteem-ed readre of Substackshire, can listen today.

Recorded, produced, and mixed by Scott Wiley at (where else?) June Audio in Provo, Utah.

Just me on guitar and vocals and Scott on electric guitar.

Enjoy.

1. I didn’t want to have to write out The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. But here I am, worrying about clarity again, not wholly convince that you might not think I’m referring to a gang including Oscar De La Hoya, Oscar The Grouch, Oscar Isaac, and Oscar De La Renta.

While we’re here, isn’t it strange that, of the four famous Oscars I thought of off the top of my head, three of them have “the” in their name?

2. I was staying at my parents’ house between college semesters. One afternoon, my younger brother was in the upstairs bathroom, showering. As he and I were wont to do, he had some music playing on the little stereo in the bathroom.

Across the little hall from the bathroom, my dad was in his office, working on his computer. And that’s when I was left to helplessly watch the slow motion car wreck.

You see, my brother had pushed play on Randy Newman’s great (my favorite AND Randy’s favorite) 1999 album Bad Love. It starts out, in classic Newman fashion, with a song skewering America’s addiction to television, to being entertained, called “My Country.” It has some teeth but mostly just some cynicism, nothing obscene or offensive.

But I know what Track 2 is. I keep hoping my brother is taking a short shower. He keeps taking a long shower. The two proverbial cars get closer and closer. As a last ditch effort, I try the bathroom door. It’s locked. The cars inch closer.

And then Track 2, “Shame”, comes on, sung from the point-of-view of a pathetic wealthy old man pleading (threatening) with his younger girlfriend (or relationship of convenience). It’s a pretty ugly and dark character study, examining anger and power dynamics (a formerly successful man hitting the wall of a younger woman who holds all the sexual cards), and, yes, shame.

I can’t recommend the song to you. But, that same year, James Taylor did. In an interview, he mentioned “Shame” as the song he wished he’d written. (I said, at the top, that Newman as divisive.)

Anyway, my brother is lathering up in the shower. My dad is working on the computer. And I am just bracing myself for the part where Randy Newman sings…Those Words. And he does. And I decide I would like to find a hole to disappear into.

But, against my impossible hopes, my dad has heard it. He comes to me down the hall and (knowing I’ll know the answer) disappointedly demands, “Who is this?” And I reply that it’s Randy Newman. And he is upset, which is a dad’s job. I would probably do the same thing, if I caught my kids listening to, say, Run The Jewels. Still, at the time, in my heart, I want to to have a talk about “character studies” and satire and unreliable narrators. I want to break down how an artist can have divinely inspired work alongside gutter poetry and how art is expression and reflection of humanity (good and bad), how we shouldn’t outright dismiss Mr. Newman because, I would bet, the songs from The Natural or songs like “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” might give you chills or make you cry or both. But I decide to avoid escalating this, involving myself, and I keep my thoughts to myself.

My brother doesn’t know that he will be instantly sweating when he gets out of the shower.

3. I’m dreaming of a white president
Just like the ones we’ve always had
A real live white man
Who knows the score
How to handle money or start a war
Wouldn’t even have to tell me what we were fighting for

4. How dare an artist have duality! How dare they be able to do more than one thing!

5. You get this same opinion—“their songs are better when sung by someone else”—with many of that generation’s “prestige” songwriters: Waits, Newman, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed. All of their voices aren’t traditionally “pretty” though I would argue that Waits, Newman, and Dylan’s sense of rhythm is pretty wicked good.