Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer, songwriter, arranger, pianist, composer and conductor known for his non-rhotic Southern-accented, if not African-American-accented, singing style, early Americana-influenced songs (often with mordant or satirical lyrics), and various film scores. His hits as a recording artist include “Short People” (1977), “I Love L.A.” (1983), and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” (1995) with Lyle Lovett, while other artists have enjoyed success with cover versions of his “Mama Told Me Not to Come” (1966), “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” (1968) and “You Can Leave Your Hat On” (1972).
Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers,[6] Newman began his songwriting career at the age of 17, penning hits for acts such as the Fleetwoods, Cilla Black, Gene Pitney, and the Alan Price Set. In 1968, he made his formal debut as a solo artist with the album Randy Newman, produced by Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks. Four of Newman’s non-soundtrack albums have charted in the US top 40: Sail Away (1972), Good Old Boys (1974), Little Criminals (1977), and Harps and Angels (2008).
Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. He has scored nine Disney-Pixar animated films, including all Toy Story films (1995–present), A Bug’s Life (1998), both Monsters, Inc. films (2001, 2013), and the first and third Cars films (2006, 2017), as well as Disney’s James and the Giant Peach (1996) and The Princess and the Frog (2009). His other film scores include Cold Turkey (1971), Ragtime (1981), The Natural (1984), Awakenings (1990), Cats Don’t Dance (1997), Pleasantville (1998), Meet the Parents (2000), Seabiscuit (2003), and Marriage Story (2019).
Newman has received twenty-two Academy Award nominations in the Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories and has won twice in the latter category, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories. He has also won three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards and the Governor’s Award from the Recording Academy.[7] In 2007, he was recognized by the Walt Disney Company as a Disney Legend.[8] He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. (wikipedia)
Trouble in Paradise is the seventh studio album by the American musician Randy Newman, released in 1983. It includes “I Love L.A.” and the first single, “The Blues”, a duet with Paul Simon. “Same Girl” is about a woman addicted to heroin. Newman supported the album playing shows with the Roches.
A cover version of “Real Emotional Girl” by the Canadian singer Patricia O’Callaghan appears on her studio album Real Emotional Girl (2001).
The New York Times wrote: “Newman inhabits his characters so completely that he makes us uneasy, wondering how much self-identification he has invested in their creation. His work achieves its power by that very confusion.” The Globe and Mail noted that “Newman still has not the least desire to play it safe: he is still tossing up the great American contradictions—the seductiveness of racism and the paranoia of sex—like a circus performer juggling machetes, with the same appalling, exhilarating effect.”
The Miami Herald determined that most of the songs “defy humming… A couple are essentially free verse set to music.” The Christian Science Monitor determined that “the polished sound of the album makes it his most commercial effort, yet he has kept his humor and wit alive.”
The album placed 13th in the 1983 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, and it was ranked as number 67 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Albums of the 80s list. (wikipedia)
Randy Newman began the slow process of transforming himself into a polished L.A. song-crafter on the album Little Criminals, and with Trouble in Paradise the metamorphosis was complete; by this time, Newman could make a record just as ear-pleasing as anything Paul Simon, Don Henley, or Lindsey Buckingham could come up with, and proved it by persuading all three to appear on the sessions. But no matter how polished the arrangements and smooth the production, Newman’s songs don’t sound like they’re ready for radio, and he’s too bright not to understand that songs about apartheid, self-pitying white bluesmen, and arrogant yuppies are poor prospects for the pop charts. Trouble in Paradise marked the high point of Newman’s struggle between pop sheen and his satiric impulses, and the album is a significant improvement over Little Criminals and Born Again.
The targets of Newman’s satirical gaze are easy to skewer, and his pen is hardly subtle, but the overall tone is more respectful than on Born Again and the results are stronger. The bitter Afrikaner in “Christmas in Capetown” and the egocentric blowhard in “My Life Is Good” have at least earned Newman’s disgust, and while many of the character studies (“Mikey,” “I’m Different”) and vignettes (“Miami,” “Take Me Back”) take a less than charitable view of their protagonists, like the losers and half-wits that populate Good Old Boys, they’re human beings whose flaws reveal a hint of tragedy. And the closing number, “Song for the Dead,” is a stunner in which a soldier explains to the bodies he’s burying the purpose behind the war that took their lives. While too slick for Newman’s core audience, Trouble in Paradise was his most intelligent and best realized work since Good Old Boys, and his finest album of the 1980s. (by Mark Deming)
Personnel:
Lenny Castro (percussion)
Nathan East (bass)
Steve Lukather (guitar)
David Paich (keyboards)
Jeff Porcaro (drums)
Randy Newman (vocals, piano, synthesizer)
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Michael Boddicker (synthesizer, piano on 05., organ on 07.)
Paulinho Da Costa (percussion on 02., 03. + 09.)
Ralph Grierson (piano on 04. + 08.)
Jerry Hey (horns on 10.)
Jim Horn (horns on 05. + 10.)
Neil Larsen (piano solo on 03.)
Steve Madaio (horns on 09.)
Dean Parks (guitar on 03. + 11., mandolin on 07.)
Paul Simon (vocals on 03.)
Jon Smith (horns on 05. + 10.)
Waddy Wachtel (guitar on 01.)
Ernie Watts (horns on 09. saxophone on 06.)
Larry Williams (horns on 01. + 09.)
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background vocals on 02. + 11.:
Jennifer Warnes – Wendy Waldman – Linda Ronstadt
background vocals on 02. + 09.:
Don Henley – Bob Seger
background vocals on 07.:
Rickie Lee Jones – Arno Lucas – Leslie Smith
background vocals on 01.:
Christine McVie – Lindsey Buckingham
Tracklist:
01. I Love L.A. 3.29
02. Christmas In Capetown 4.23
03. The Blues 3.05
04. Same Girl 2.55
05. Mikey’s 2.12
06. My Life Is Good 4.38
07. Miami 4.03
08. Real Emotional Girl 2.31
09. Take Me Back 4.10
10. There’s A Party At My House 2.52
11. I’m Different 2.35
12. Song For The Dead 3.02
All songs written by Randy Newman
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