Randy Newman - Sail Away

Released - May 1972

Genre - Jazz Rock

Producer - Lenny Waronker & Russ Titelman

Selected Personnel - Randy Newman (Vocals/Piano/Arrangements); Ry Cooder (Guitar); Russ Titelman (Guitar); Jim Keltner (Drums); Wilton Felder (Bass); Milt Holland (Percussion)

Standout Track - Lonely At The Top

Like, I imagine, a lot of people of my generation, the work of sarcastic weirdo Randy Newman has been familiar to me since a very young age due to his role as one of the go-to film score composers for the masterful films of Disney-Pixat, most notably Toy Story in 1995, for which he wrote and sang the timeless "You've Got A Friend In Me." It's probable that one day, when the dust settles, Newman will be remembered more as a composer of film scores than as an artist in his own right, which is a terrible shame as his (admittedly brilliant) film work overshadows a truly magnificent career as a singer-songwriter that has all the catchiness and impish sense of fun of his Pixar scores but far more witty, inventive, and in some places, genuinely profound. I first became aware of Newman's own work, having been familiar with his songs for Disney for years, in my teens when my mum discovered and fell in love with the brilliantly sarcastic "Short People" from his career-best 1977 album Little Criminals. From there, my mum and I embarked on a very limited voyage of discovery into Newman's work that never really got much further than Little Criminals and his impressively star-studded musical adaptation of the Faust legend, imaginatively titled Randy Newman's Faust. Nonetheless, both those albums contained music so compelling, inventive and emotive that they became a significant part of the soundtrack to my teens. Eventually, in a trajectory familiar now to anybody who's been reading this blog regularly, I started to delve further into the discographies of artists I'd loved on a limited basis for years, and it wasn't long before I found myself at Sail Away.

It's a testament to the impact Newman had on the imaginations of other American artists at the time that a number of the songs here were already familiar to me in altered forms, most notably "Sail Away" and "You Can Leave Your Hat On," which have been covered extensively. Newman's own versions of his songs are rarely well-known, but he's had a significant impact on the musical landscape, with his timeless classic "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" from 1968 having virtually become a Great American Songbook standard, covered by everyone from Nina Simone to Katie Melua to Peter Gabriel. He's a songwriter of incredible variety, as well, with a keen, mocking and savage eye for political and social satire but an equally attuned ability to write a jaunty pop song with a winning melody or a poignant ballad that tugs at the heartstrings. Of course, by 1972 this is to be expected as Newman had spent the best part of a decade working as a songwriter for other artists like Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. By the time he had built up his confidence enough to launch himself as a performer as well as a composer, his songwriting skills had been developed to peak condition. Of course, as a performer he's a figure who takes some getting used to courtesy of that weird, strangled voice, but as off-kilter as it is, it's a voice so full of character that it's impossible not to love it, really.

The songs on Sail Away run more or less the full gamut of what Newman was capable of as an artist - the title track is a gloriously tongue-in-cheek character sketch of a slave trader trying to entice Africans back to America. Newman excels at these character moments written at a distance from himself, and "Sail Away" is one of the best, though it's hilariously been misinterpreted over the years as some kind of patriotic espousal of American pride by people apparently not listening to lyrics like "Climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me." "Lonely At The Top" is actually one of the very first Newman songs I fell in love with having seen it in a film as a kid. There's something brilliantly world-weary and plodding about the sax and horns arrangement while Newman croons fitfully about the perils of success, again imagining himself into the shoes of some megastar likes Frank Sinatra, who the song was written for though he never recorded it. "Political Science" revisits the biting satire of "Sail Away" by imagining America instigating total nuclear annihilation around the world, while "Old Man" and "Dayton, Ohio - 1903" let him prove himself as a ballad writer. Both are beautifully simple pieces limited to just voice and piano, both reflecting in some way on the passing of time, the first by looking at the ageing of one individual and the other by thinking back to a time of less hostility and cynicism, "when things were green and moving slow." It's a song I actually sang with my school choir back in the early 2000s but never knew the provenance of until I discovered Sail Away.

Two of the album's other great standouts offer the same biting sarcasm of "Sail Away" itself, but this time addressing broader themes. "You Can Leave Your Hat On" is a brilliantly pathetic sketch of male lustfulness and perversion, rendered all the more tragic and hilarious by Newman's thin, reedy vocal and the plodding arrangement. It's been repositioned over the years as some kind of raunchy, glamourous striptease number but it's rendered far more potent and hilarious when Newman sings it with his tongue firmly in his cheek. Then there's the portentous and dark, yet still amusingly cynical, album closer "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" - the general theme is one Newman would revisit decades later with Randy Newman's Faust, but here it's done very succinctly. Newman casts himself as God, looking over the human race and revelling in their pettiness and their indentured servitude. Imagining God as such a smug, vindictive figure is a gloriously funny, yet simultaneously daring move, and it's one of the most thought-provoking songs in his discography.

Sail Away is over in a flash, with Newman having honed himself as a writer of short, concise songs at this stage, but every single second of it is funny or touching or deliciously barbed. Over the next few years he would gradually become more ambitious as a songwriter, composing pieces that were more unusual or grand in scope, but always staying true to the catchy jazzy spirit that made his work so great. If the only Randy Newman stuff you're familiar with are his Disney scores then it's well worth going back and listening to what he's really capable of - Little Criminals is the best thing he would ever do, but there's no harm in starting with Sail Away, as it's a brilliantly concise example of the breadth and scope of his work.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Randy Newman.

1. Sail Away

2. Lonely At The Top

3. He Gives Us All His Love

4. Last Night I Had A Dream

5. Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear

6. Old Man

7. Political Science

8. Burn On

9. Memo To My Son

10. Dayton, Ohio - 1903

11. You Can Leave Your Hat On

12. God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)