Were you considering different people to follow up your biographies of Paul Simon and Johnny Cash, or was it inevitably Newman? I realized that of all the time I spent at the L.A. Times and the great ...

His movie songs are filled with memorable melodies; his own albums with unsavory characters. One of the most astute cultural observers is the subject of a new book. By Bob Mehr Around the summer of ...

Randy Newman at home in Pacific Palisades in 2017. The musician and songwriter is the subject of a new biography by former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) In ...

"Randy Newman is our great master of American song and storytelling."--Bruce Springsteen "At last, the biography that Randy Newman has long deserved. The emotional precision, the humor and sweep, the ...

A biography of the singer behind “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and “Short People” considers a complicated man with a satirical edge. By Dwight Garner When you purchase an independently reviewed book ...

It seems that there’s a Randy Newman for all sorts of music listeners. Like acerbic/satirical/edgy/intelligent pop songs? He’s the guy who wrote tunes from the ...

Listen to more stories on the Noa app. The singer, songwriter, and composer Randy Newman had a fascination with the legend of Faust that approached obsession. Beginning around 1981, he worked for some ...

Since leaving his post as one of the nation’s most well-known rock critics, a job he held down at the Los Angeles Times from the late ’60s through 2005, Hilburn has written four books, including the ...

In 1974, Randy Newman opened his album “Good Old Boys” with “Rednecks,” a song about American racism so honest and shocking — not least because Newman brandishes the N-word in the voice of his ...

Gather round, youngsters, and I’ll tell you of a long-gone age in which the species known as auteur singer-songwriter was nurtured – indulged even – and encouraged to ply its art for art’s sake, free ...

For the last 55 years or so, you’ve had a friend in Randy Newman, if you have a thing for songs that offer eviscerating, uncompromising, even devastating dissections of the human condition and the ...