The anthem Randy Newman called “ignorant and proud of it”
For many, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Randy Newman will always be the immortal voice behind the original Toy Story soundtrack, composing the score and penning its three original songs including ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’, serving as the series’ musical motif and winning him a 2005 Disney Legend nod.
Yet before he found a second career scoring numerous Disney-Pixar films, Newman was crafting slyly sardonic lyrical vignettes of American taboos and societal barbs through his everyman persona, veering between lush orchestral sweeps and quietly angry snarl sometimes in the same song.
Taking a few years off following the lacklustre critical response to 1979’s Born Again, Newman headed to Hollywood’s Warner Bros Recording Studio to record his first album of the 1980s, Trouble in Paradise, its second single proving to be one of his biggest hits. Suggested by Eagles drummer Don Henley to pen an ode to California’s biggest city, Newman set about to write a double-edged love letter to Tinseltown via his customary lyrical technique of written points of view from protagonists filled with obnoxious or arrogant worldviews in the wry ‘I Love LA’.
Our boorish Angeleno doesn’t hide his petty prejudices and ill-mannered front, driving down the Imperial Highway lambasting New Yorkers and Chicagoans and boasting of his “big nasty redhead” in the passenger’s side, happy to point out a homeless man begging for change as he is the women perusing the sidewalks that have caught his fancy. In a curious call-and-response moment, Newman reels off Century Boulevard, Victory Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard, and Sixth Street interspersed with “we love it!”, the areas plagued with a troubled reputation in the early 1980s.
“There is an aggressive ignorance to the song – ignorant and proud of it,” Newman told Rolling Stone in 2017. “There’s nothing wrong with the Beach Boys and open-top cars. But the guy talks about the bum (‘Look at that bum over there, man / He’s down on his knees’) and is still shouting ‘We love it'”. A song that balances critique and appraisal with bristling precarity in a way only Newman can, ‘I Love LA’ has endeared itself as the city’s unofficial anthem by its capture of LA’s true character: painting a picture of chintzy superficiality, pollution, vapid celebrity culture, and gaudy identity while also depicting the metropolis as a slice of urban magic you absolutely want to visit.
While initial reception was muted, LA’s hosting of the Summer Olympics in 1984 boosted the song’s profile, helped in no small part by a major Nike campaign featuring athletes Mary Decker and Carl Lewis training to Newman’s biting glossy pop. Receiving worldwide exposure through its incessant play, it became ensconced in the city’s songbook, a song that scored the pride felt during Olympic fever.
‘I Love LA’ still enjoys prominence in the city’s sporting culture, boomed out giant PAs should the Dodgers, Rams, Lakers, or Galaxy teams score or win a game. Newman even performed his much-loved hit at the former Staples Center in celebration of the Lakers’ ‘three-peat’ 2001-2002 season success, winning plaudits while coyly taking a dig at the City of Angels, an irony undoubtedly not lost on the mordant songsmith.
