The songwriter Don Henley thought no one could equal: “Tremendous scope and skillfulness”
The art of any good songwriter is having a singular voice. While there are many people who can try to put together pop hits everyone can sing along to, there’s a certain talent that comes with everyone knowing that it’s one of your songs from the minute that they begin listening to it. Don Henley did eventually reach that status when working with the Eagles, but he knew that Randy Newman had a voice that no one could have possibly emulated.
Then again, that’s before you actually listen to Newman sing. No matter how often he has written the best song conceived by human hands, Newman never claimed to be the greatest singer in the world, often talking about his voice in the same way that people talk about the sounds of a dying walrus.
But no one really needs to have a show-stopping voice to make people’s hearts dance. There just needs to be some soul and a little bit of heart in what the person is singing, and listening to ‘Short People’ and ‘Rednecks’, Newman was one of the most sarcastically earnest people who ever touched a microphone.
There’s a certain empathy in every one of his songs, even if it’s being directed at the real issues he sees in America. Despite writing biting social commentary, the fact that songs like ‘Rednecks’ are still so pressing today either proves that he was radically ahead of his time or that the US has strayed far away from the values that it had in its early days.
And for every millennial reading this copy, there’s no doubt that songs like ‘You’ve Got a Friend In Me’ and ‘When She Loved Me’ from the Toy Story franchise are enough to get you a little bit teary-eyed remembering the more innocent times. Henley had a firm grasp on what the masses wanted to hear, but when inducting him into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Eagles frontman knew that he couldn’t even dream of writing something as intricate as Newman had.
Despite playing on a handful of his classics, Henley thought that Newman’s voice was all his own, saying, “[His albums] contain songwriting and musicianship of tremendous scope and skillfulness. No one has written more beautifully about love and loss. No one has written more bravely about racism and religion and politics and war. No one has written with more humour about lust and greed.”
But that doesn’t just come from Newman’s folksy songwriting. Some of his best material involved him calling on the classic styles of old, including a complex take on music theory that could put modern jazz artists to shame half the time.
So when listening to that one song about short people that many a dad can’t get enough of, be sure to take a listen to what’s really going on underneath the surface. Yes, it’s not the coolest thing in the world to be listening to, but this is also the kind of eclectic take on rock and roll that will never be seen again.
