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Randy Newman Explains Every Song on His New Album, Dark Matter

Randy Newman has been confusing people with his songs for half a century. And it’s still happening. The hunched 73-year-old recently turned up in a segment on TMZ’s TV show , of all places, reporting on “Putin,” a track from his latest LP, Dark Matter . The song is a biting faux-anthem for the Russian president, with lines like, “When he takes his shirt off/Makes me wanna be a lady!” It’s a goof, but TMZ was stumped. “Is he puckering up—or poking fun?” asked the clip’s cartoonish narrator, after Newman affably tried to explain the song to a paparazzi cameraman in an airport. Then the gossip site’s newsroom launched into an argument about the song’s true meaning—as evidence, one diminutive TMZ staffer even attested to the bigotry of Newman’s 1977 hit “ Short People ,” a song that was written to expose the ills of baseless bigotry.

When I bring up this TMZ appearance to Newman, he sounds genuinely amused. “Yeah, there I was!” he drawls. “Actually, I’m probably the only person who likes that cameraman—it’s just that he’s got his camera with him.” That Newman is able to find some humanity in a guy who hounds celebrities and is generally considered a pariah is no surprise. He’s had a lot of practice.

Though he’s likely best known as the composer behind the music in the Toy Story movies, Newman’s most rewarding work lies in the 11 solo albums he’s released since 1968. In the past, he’s written songs from the perspective of slave traders, Alabama racists, California douchebags, and creepy stalkers—not exactly Pixar material—and on Dark Matter opener “The Great Debate,” he plays a slick-talking faith healer type bent on disproving scientists of all stripes. But the record also features less sinister Newman tropes: sentimental ballads that steer clear of easy emotions, sly historical gambits, paranoid dixieland vamps. In an effort to minimize the misunderstandings this time around, the songwriter delved into the backstories and inspirations behind each song from the new album.

1. “The Great Debate”

Randy Newman: Faith wins because it’s got Dorothy Love Coates , the Golden Gate Quartet , Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, everybody. I don’t know whether I am a music lover, strictly—it’s hard to say how I feel about it—but I love good gospel music. No doubt. My side, the agnostic, atheist side, has got nothing like that. There’s no great song that’s like, “Let’s all not believe and play our agnostic hymnals!” They got everything: the high ceilings, the confessions—man what a hit idea.

Oh yeah. When I listen to Beethoven’s “ Missa Solemnis ,” I don’t think about it. There’s a Bach mass that is sort of anti-Semitic— it’s not so nice . But it’s Bach. So it’s pretty good.

2. “Brothers”

… what the hell is this?!

What interested me about the song is that they’re brothers, irrespective of who they are. I like the dynamic of an older brother poking fun at the enthusiasms of the younger brother. I didn’t know I was interested in the period itself, but when I think of it now, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a time when you were looking up every time a plane went by—for a few days there, it was scary like it hasn’t been since. So there is something there. And I liked how the trivial the reasons were to support the Bay of Pigs, and that the guy wants to save Celia Cruz. Because the U.S. has done some invading of small countries for not much more than that.

Yeah. My wife just had appendicitis surgery yesterday, and when one of my boys found out she was in the hospital, he said, “Who’s feeding and watering Dad?” I wouldn’t have come up with something like that, but that’s sort of like how my father was, and like I am to an extent. It’s very funny.

All in all, the whole process of being part of a family is fantastically interesting to me. I’m very interested in behavior—how people speak and how what they say indicates what they think. That’s what I write about.

It could have been as much as three years ago. It was when all those pictures were appearing of him with his shirt off, and I couldn’t understand why. What did he want? I think it was just personal vanity of some kind, like he wanted to be Tom Cruise. It wasn’t enough to be the richest and most powerful. He wanted to be the most handsome and a superhero, throwing young people around and wrestling. It’s a strange thing.

Yup. Though this one is way less critical of Putin than I thought I would have been. As I’m doing it, I’m saying to myself, I’m not criticizing him enough . He’s a bad guy. But I was conscious of it being too easy. It’s like writing an anti-war song that goes, “War is bad.” Well yeah, of course it is!

4. “Lost Without You”

There is a real similarity between the two, though I didn’t do anything purposeful to do it. When you see people in your immediate family die, it’s usually not just sudden. It’s a longer process, and people behave in radically different ways, and some of that behavior has to be forgiven later.

My dad was a doctor and he took care of the practical care for his brothers when they were dying. Not easy. Anytime one of them died, he would fall out with somebody, or somebody would complain that he should have given them more rutabaga or something. So I saw that and I thought about how if my wife was gone, it would feel like this guy feels: lost.

When my mother was dying, my father was sort of taking care of her. But he was was taking too much of this medicine, so he was falling around a little bit. He didn’t seem like he was taking care of her right. So my brother and I went to her and said, “Jeez, we’re sorry that Dad’s not doing the job for you.” And she said, “Don’t you say anything bad about him. From the very beginning of this, he couldn’t have been better.” And it really shocked my brother and I, because we never saw her express her love for him ever.

5. “Sonny Boy”

Yeah it is! Though I didn’t really know who I loved. In retrospect, I fell for the stuff I heard [by Sonny Boy II] on the R&B station here in the late ’50s, when I was 13—a couple of songs called “ So Sad to Be Lonesome ” and “ The Goat .” And one day not too long ago I went to look for a record of “The Goat,” and there was the other guy! And his stuff was good too, like “ Good Morning School Girl ” and “ Jackson Blues .” I root for Sonny Boy I, of course, but the second guy was just as good, or better. I just think it’s shitty that that guy would do that.

6. “It’s a Jungle Out There (V2)”

I never liked saying “I’m only kidding with ya” in my songs, and when I play this song live now, I have been trying to leave that line out. But I think [the narrator] has to say it, actually. It’s a matter of getting the person in the song right. I’m a little confused myself about who the narrator of that one is. Personally, I don’t think it’s a jungle out there. I wouldn’t say that. Because that phrase has been used wrong. There’s something vaguely offensive about it, depending on whose saying it.

Talking about these songs, it seems like my stuff is so complicated, like, Why do I do it? But it shouldn’t sound complicated. It’s got to sound easy and be as easy to understand as I can make it. Because it’s not easy to pick up what I do. I listen to the radio sometimes and I don’t listen to the lyrics at all, I don’t know what they’re saying—I just sounded like my father there. But my own stuff can’t sound too cerebral. I try and make it sound as if it were simple.

7. “She Chose Me”

I got a letter from a fan saying, “This is a really good song.” I hadn’t thought of it in 30 years, but when I heard my demo of it, I thought it was doable to do it, so I did.

He’s waiting for the money to roll in.

It’s not that, but it’s misbegotten. As if people who watch cop shows were going to sit still for a cop singing . Bochco is a great guy, and very convincing. I turned it down the first time I talked to him, and when I left I said, [ sings ] “Good- bye !” But he got me back there, and I ended up trying to do it. I wanted to see if it was possible. And in some scenes it was possible.

I haven’t seen it in a long time, but that clip would be this supposedly ugly guy with an absolutely beautiful wife, and he was wondering how he could be so blessed to have this wonderful person loving him. And that’s not a bad idea. It’s kind of a big idea. It’s certainly worth a song or two.

I mean, if I can write a song like “She Chose Me” or “ Feels Like Home ,” I do it. It’s less interesting to me. Well, this one isn’t less interesting because it’s got some kind of an edge to it. “Feels Like Home” is going to end up as the most popular song I ever wrote possibly, outside of “ You’ve Got a Friend in Me ,” and to me it’s of less interest than “ The World Isn’t Fair ,” or “ Shame ,” or “ Korean Parents .” But I am not a typical listener.

Yeah, it’s like I’m poorly constituted for the medium. If you do write a straight love song, people know what to expect. They don’t have to listen. And when people listen to my music, I’d like them to relax. But I just can’t make myself do anything that you could just put on while eating a Baby Ruth and drinking a Coke. I can’t. I don’t want to write background music like that. I don’t mind it in a picture, because there is an orchestra and there’s something going on. But I don’t want to write a lyric, for the most part, that is worth anything. It’s a real problem.

I hear that what’s-his-name—Uncle John Misty, or whatever it is—writes things in character occasionally. I have heard a couple of his songs. I couldn’t hear me there, but he’s good. I heard the kid Lorde’s song about class, “Royals,” and it was remarkable. Lady Gaga had that one song, “Born This Way,” that’s a real good idea. And Katy Perry’s stuff is impressive—that ain’t easy, and she’s a hell of an actress, doing whatever part she’s playing there. My son told me about Vince Staples recently, but I haven’t heard him yet. Overall, though, I can’t even pretend to know what’s going on.

8. “On the Beach”

Yeah, this one is more experiential. I went to the beach every day for three or four years as a kid. And then I stopped. But there was a group of people that didn’t stop. They made it a way of life. One guy ended up there for good—but it’s not a happy thing when you’re 50 years old and you don’t have a roof.

9. “Wandering Boy”

I listened to this pianist give a talk about Charles Ives’ “Concord” Sonata, and he said it’s based on a tune from the early 1900s, “ Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight? ” He played it, and it’s fantastic—I liked it better than the “Concord” Sonata. So I just took the title and wrote this song.

As a family, we went to this Labor Day party in the neighborhood for years. I was there when I was 10 years old and when I was 50 years old. You would see a little kid at 5, and then you’d see him again 20 years later, for one day. There was one bright-eyed 11-year-old kid there, and my dad said, “He’s gonna be president some day.” But he had a tough time with heroin and a lot of other things; he was not president. It was about having that kind of promise—jumping off the high board, yelling, and being real happy—and then falling off the grid for some reason, into the big hole. There’s no net in this country. In Sweden, you can’t get down there to the gutter. But you can here.

So I tried to imagine what it would be like if one of those homeless guys that I see on the street a little ways away from here were one of my sons. And then I wrote the song. And it came hard. I was choking up when I was writing the thing. I would play it for someone, and I’d get to, “Where’s my wandering boy…”—anything that makes you cry must be something to do with yourself.

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Wandering Boy

Randy newman.

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Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter,arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant (and often satirical) pop songs and for film scores. more »

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Written by: RANDY NEWMAN

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Know any other songs by randy newman don't keep it to yourself, image credit, the web's largest resource for, music, songs & lyrics, a member of the stands4 network, watch the song video, more tracks from the album, dark matter.

• #1 The Great Debate
• #2 Brothers
• #4 Lost Without You
• #5 Sonny Boy
• #6 It's a Jungle Out There
• #6 It's a Jungle Out There [V2]
• #7 She Chose Me
• #8 On the Beach
• #9 Wandering Boy

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Randy Newman - Wandering Boy Lyrics

Artist: Randy Newman

Album: Dark Matter

Thank you for the party We're always glad we came I'm the only one from the family tonight But I know they'd say the same I came here with my father Then I brought my wife Three sons, a daughter Then the last baby boy The little caboose we called him The light of her life And that's who I'm waiting for Where is my wandering boy tonight? Where is my wandering boy? If you see him push him toward the light Where is my wandering boy? He went off of that high board there When he was five years old Laughing like a maniac Shining in the Sun like gold He was afraid of nothin' then He was loved by everyone I see it clear as I see you That day there in the sun I hope he's warm and I hope he's dry And that a stranger's eye is a friendly eye And I hope he has someone Close by his side And I hope that he'll come home Where is my wandering boy tonight? Where is my wandering boy? If you see him tell him everything's alright Push him toward the light Where is my wandering boy?

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clock This article was published more than  7 years ago

Randy Newman cared enough about his new album to help pay for it

LOS ANGELES — So, finally, at 73, Randy Newman has written a straightforward, autobiographical love song, right? "She Chose Me," a ballad on "Dark Matter," his first album in nine years, opens with lush strings, a torch-song piano and the soulful, gumbo-ish croon that's distinctively his own.

This had to be for your wife, he's told. Gretchen is inside the beautiful house they built together. Newman is sitting out back on a clear Pacific Palisades morning. He's joined by an old friend, the legendary record producer Lenny Waronker.

“Probably,” he says. “Since I wrote one [1999’s “I Miss You”] to my first wife, this one’s for her.”

That would be a perfect way to leave it, the master songwriter with the short-distance dedication. But Newman chews on his answer like a chunk of overcooked flank steak.

"Even though I didn't know her when I wrote it, I don't think," he continues. "I wrote it . . . I hope this doesn't affect me getting the Academy Award for this one, but I wrote it for "Cop Rock."

That would be the musical police drama that lasted for a single season on ABC in 1990. It’s actually possible he wrote “She Chose Me” for both. “Cop Rock” premiered in September of that year. He and Gretchen were married a month later.

“I just wrote it,” Newman says finally, and laughs. “I’m a professional songwriter. I don’t need a wife.”

Fair enough. In the almost 50 years he’s been recording, Newman has been able to create a stunning body of work by staying in character. His first-person portraits of the heartbroken, heartbreaking and misunderstood, and his political satires, have earned him a loyal fan base, the admiration of his peers and the occasional oddball controversy. His lone top-10 hit, 1977’s “Short People,” confused enough people, who didn’t get the mock attack, to inspire protests and an attempt in the Maryland legislature to ban it.

This month, in classically Newmanesque style, he made headlines for a song that he decided was too vulgar to record for “Dark Matter,” his new album. The demo is called “What a Dick.”

“Randy Newman writes comic song about Donald Trump’s penis,” the London Guardian proclaimed.

Spin.com reprinted the lyrics.

“Dark Matter,” which arrives Aug. 4, is only Newman’s fifth album since the Carter administration. It’s worth the wait. “Matter” includes arrangements that could carry one of Frank Sinatra’s Nelson Riddle records, narratives told in the voices of the Kennedys, long-gone bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson and Vladimir Putin, and a closer, “Wandering Boy,” that’s achingly sad.

There is also the album’s lead-off track, an epic called “The Great Debate.” It is what it sounds like: Scientists on one side, true believers on the other, arguments over global warming, evolution and religion. Mention is also made of a manipulative writer named “Mr. Newman.”

“It’s a crazy way to start a record, an eight-minute song that goes to all these places,” says Mitchell Froom, the album’s co-producer. “But it’s stunning.”

Why don’t they write songs like that?

In the old days, the golden era of pop craftsmanship, the record company grunts would be hounding him, nagging Newman for the next record. These days, he’s on his own clock. He works in a broken industry, in which even an artist’s dream label such as Nonesuch has its limits. On “Dark Matter,” Newman kicked in about $20,000 to help pay for the recording.

“It is important to serve the songs as best I can,” he says. “And if I think I need a few more guys, and they won’t pay for it, I do. If it needs it, it needs it.”

Ask Newman about legacy, about his place in music, and you’ll hear a mix of modesty, frustration and pride. He takes pride in his approach, to listen to and watch the behavior of others. He’s always found other people’s stories more interesting.

Newman watched segregationist (and then Georgia governor) Lester Maddox on “The Dick Cavett Show” before writing 1974’s “Rednecks,” sung from the point of view of a Southerner with a scathing view of Northern racism. The n-word is the chorus.

Waronker remembers being struck by Newman’s curiosity from the start.

“Once,” Waronker says, “we were in New York. I was working there, and Randy came back to see me. Randy was 19. I must have been 22, or even younger. And one night he said, ‘I’m going out.’ And he comes back around midnight or a little later. And I said ‘Where did you go?’ And he said, ‘I just took a cab ride.’ And I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And he said, ‘I just liked talking to the cabdriver.’ It is a small thing and I might have blown it up over the years, but it’s these things — not only does he see the interesting part of different people coming from different places, but he is able to understand them and become them. Now that is hard.”

“I remember that cabdriver,” Newman cuts in and laughs. “I remember what he had to say. It was terrible stuff about women, mostly. . . . He kept going and going and going, and, uh, actually I wanted to get out, but I couldn’t exactly get out where I was.”

Amos Newman, his oldest son and the product of his first marriage, to Roswitha Boss, thinks that his father’s songs are often deeply personal, even if they’re in the voice of someone else.

“There’s a song called ‘Memo to My Son,’ which is, ostensibly, about me,” he says. “At the time, I might have been the only child. Then there’s ‘The World Isn’t Fair’ and ‘My Life Is Good.’ Which is clearly not him, but it’s his perspective. There’s a thing on there about taking his kids to private school. And he sees the mothers there. The mothers dressed up ready for the night. Diamond pearls, whatever it was. There clearly are things that are from his own observations and his own experiences.”

Newman is clearly at peace with his place in music.

At a recent concert in Lowell, Mass., he sat at the piano and dutifully played the song that’s most popular with the millennials, “Toy Story’s” “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” But he also delivered one of his toughest and best songs, “Sail Away,” a cheerfully delivered tale told from the perspective of a slave trader. With good humor, Newman also poked fun at his destiny as a critically acclaimed, commercially challenged songwriter.

He demonstrated his original version of “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” It slogs along, a creepy grind from a man you would certainly not want to bring home for Thanksgiving. Then he jokes about the upbeat covers popularized by Joe Cocker and Tom Jones. Talking after the show, Newman says he once cared enough about this stuff to consider calling Three Dog Night to ask them not to release their version of his “Mama Told Me Not to Come” as a single. Waronker persuaded him to let it go.

“ ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come,’ they made that a hook, whereas I didn’t,” Newman says. “I didn’t even say it one of the times we got to a chorus. I must be antithetical to hit.”

From good to great

The records never come easy. “Dark Matter” may have been the toughest.

“I had these songs for, in a couple of cases, two years, and I would go in there and move forward a little, and I was having trouble making up my mind,” Newman says. “I don’t know why, but it happened to me.”

That’s where Mitchell Froom came in. The producer, whose résumé includes Elvis Costello and Los Lobos, has worked with Newman since 1999’s “Bad Love.” This time around, Froom came to the house, set up a microphone and spent a month making demos, something for Newman to judge. “It surprised me how ambitious he was,” Froom says. “And how prepared he was to work on it as hard as he did. You see somebody work through a series of good ideas to get to great ones. And with the arrangements, it would be the difference between something that worked very well, and it would sound like him, and I’d be satisfied, and I’d say, ‘That’s great.’ But then, a week later, he would come up with something that was greater there. It wasn’t fast or easy or any of those things, but really impressive.”

Newman wrote "Putin," a comic take on the Russian leader, more than two years ago, long before the election-tampering news cycle took hold.

He was inspired by “the shirt-off stuff, the whole part of his personality that apparently wants to be not only the richest man in the world, and the most powerful man in the world by default, and wants to be Tom Cruise. He wants to be a star.”

"Brothers" came out of his desire to consider the relationship between not just the Kennedys, but brothers in general. The song darts into an aside on George Preston Marshall , the late Redskins owner who held out on signing any black players until 1962, and throws a musical change-up with a section on Cuban singer Celia Cruz.

There are also a pair of songs about those who are lost. “On the Beach” is about a high school friend who drifts away. “Wandering Boy” is the story of a child who grows up and disappears from his father’s life. When he’s asked about the song, Newman chokes up, a reaction that he admits later, surprises him.

“I don’t know why, but when something like that happens, reason tells me it’s about yourself,” he says. “I think I imagine having lost a kid, one of my children. I mean I did to write it. I imagine that, and I imagine a guy I went to school with who ended up on skid row or on the beach, wherever he was staying, who fell out. The idea of falling out has always been interesting to me.”

Back in Pacific Palisades, Waronker and Newman are talking about songwriting again. The producer mentions that often, younger bands he works with will be in awe when they learn how close he is with Newman. They’ll ask if they can come to the house to meet the master.

That would, for many, be a wonderful compliment on which to rest. Newman, naturally, doesn’t view it way.

“How come they don’t write like that then?” he asks, as though he doesn’t totally trust his friend’s anecdote.

“They can’t,” Waronker says. “Randy, it’s not that easy.”

Randy Newman will appear at the Birchmere in Alexandria on Sept. 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m.

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Randy Newman

Wandering boy.

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Caregiver passes out drunk, non-verbal child found wandering in GA neighborhood

Empty Road (AAA)

HINESVILLE, Ga. — An urgent need to identify a child led to a caregiver being arrested.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks ]

Tuesday evening, Hinesville police began asking residents for help identifying a child found wandering on Welborn Street.

According to officers the child, who appeared to be four or five years old, was non-verbal.

Later, the child was safely reunited with his family.

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During the investigation, officers learned that the caregiver, who wasn’t a family member, was responsible for watching the child.

Hinesville police said the caregiver was ‘extremely intoxicated’ and had passed out. This allowed the child to leave the home.

The caregiver, whose age and identity were not released, was arrested and is facing charges.

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BEAUMONT — Beaumont police have found the parents of a boy discovered wandering near Lamar University.

Officer Haley Morrow says child was in the middle of the street at about midnight in the 4400 block of Jimmy Simmons Boulevard.

He is two years old and was wearing a grey long sleeve shirt, navy blue sweatpants, and black socks.

About two hours after police alerted the public, Officer Morrow sent out another alert that officers had found the boy's parents.