On the evidence of his first album of new songs in nine years, “Harps and Angels” (Nonesuch), Randy Newman is not living out the artistic decline spelled out in his 1999 song “I’m Dead (But Don’t Know It).”
Even though that song’s narrator embodies many of Newman’s peers from the ’60s and ’70s — “I have nothing left to say, but I’m gonna say it anyway” — the singer-songwriter himself has escaped a similar fate. His standards remain high, his work stellar, even though he’s made a ton of dough from movie soundtracks (he’s practically the house band for the Pixar franchise) and his 65th birthday will be celebrated in November.
Instead of growing content and nostalgic, Newman remains at his acerbic best on “Harps and Angels,” his deceptively jaunty, blues-based, luminously orchestrated pop songs brimming with dark humor and pointed commentary in the tradition of ’70s classics such as “Sail Away,” “Louisiana” and “Political Science.”
“I’ve stopped beating myself up about my work pace,” he says, a few days before hitting the road for a tour that brings him Friday to the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan. “Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to do as good a record as I think this one is, if I’d done 40 albums.”
He acknowledges that he thinks a lot about the issues raised in “I’m Dead.” Artists in other media often get better with age. Not so with rock and pop music, Newman says.
“Carole King, I thought, did her best stuff before [her 1971 solo breakthrough] ‘Tapestry,'” he says. “If I ever had a hero, she was it, because I was trying to do the same thing, except she was doing it better. But I like the stuff on ‘Tapestry’ less than the music she was writing before. The Beatles, James Taylor, Dylan — who’s as good as anyone ever was. There are a lot of us getting free rides for generations. It may be because the audience has a great deal of affection for the stuff we did in the ’60s and ’70s. I don’t understand why the work has fallen off. King and [Gerry Goffin] were competing with [Barry] Mann and [Cynthia] Weil, and in the Beatles, Lennon was competing with McCartney. It was all tight, and everyone was looking at what everyone else was doing, and trying to top it.”
And now? “I’ll pay attention to what people like John Mayer or the White Stripes are doing, but I don’t really do what they do,” he says.
His special brand of pessimism, dipped in black humor, sets him apart. Always has.
In the sensitive-singer-songwriter ’70s, he was the guy in the corner blowing raspberries at sanctimony, sentimentality and all manner of sacred cows, including himself. Yet he can write a great love song if he puts his mind to it. “Harps and Angels” reprises one of the most tender and compassionate songs he has ever written, “Feels Like Home.”
“I did back flips and turned myself into a pretzel to write a straightforward love song,” he says with a chuckle. “A bunch of people have covered it. If I’d written songs like that my whole career, I’d be oil painting in Kauai by now. That’s the kind of song the medium I am in is really for and about. Before rap, it was love songs that people wanted. Direct expressions of emotion, which I don’t do much of today. It’s a suicidal medium for me to pick to make a living. At first I was wondering why there weren’t more [songwriters] following me out of the trenches and doing songs like I do. And the reason is they’re too smart.”
Randy Newman
Something to say
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan
Price: $39.50-$49.50; 312-559-1212
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greg@gregkot.com
Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 8 p.m. Fridays and 11 a.m. Saturdays on WBEZ-FM 91.5..
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