Randy Newman’s Bad Love at 25 Years

Everything I write all sounds the same
Each record that I'm making
Is like a record that I've made
Just not as good

In 1999, this line from Randy Newman’s “I’m Dead (And I Don’t Know It),” the third track from his album, Bad Love, could have been interpreted as a funny, self-aware lyric from the mid-50s composer who recognized that his best stuff was behind him, but I tend to think that Newman may have viewed the lyric with a degree of irony, because he probably realized that he was recording some of the best songs of his career. Other Newman records get more love – Good Old Boys, Sail Away, Little Criminals and Trouble in Paradise, but for me, this is his masterpiece, the culmination of everything he’d perfected over the years: witty lyrics, intricate orchestration, deft observations of history and society, and shifting moods, the latter gift likely developed over the previous two decades of writing for film. I’ve read some comments on-line about how he missed the boat on this release, but I think those listeners should sit down one more time with a drink in one hand, the lyric sheet in the other, and savor the brilliance of Bad Love.

Produced by Mitch Froom (whom he’s continued to work with on two subsequent albums), Bad Love is twenty-five years old now, and I am now a year older than Newman was when he recorded it. I’d like to think that means that my best work may still be ahead of me, but dang – that Newman was able to record an album this good at age 55 is amazing. Then again, it may have been exactly the age necessary to address the song topics with such directness and deftness: this isn’t an album that he could have made in his 20s.

Newman is known for writing songs in character – often disreputable ones, at that – but in Bad Love he inserts more of his own life into the lyrics than previous albums (save for the first several tracks from the autobiographical Land of Dreams). In the opening song, ”My Country,” Newman observes the culture of watching TV in US society, but then in the final verse, he discusses his own relief when his house empties and he’s able to switch on the tube and tune out:

Now your children are your children,
even when they're grown.
When they speak to you,
you got to listen to what they have to say.
But they all live alone now,
they have TVs of their own
but they keep on coming over anyway.
And much as I love them,
I'm always kind of glad when they go away.

I sent this lyric to a friend of mine a few years ago, and she hated it, like it was a personal affront to parents everywhere. Me, I think it’s hilarious.

More personal is the heartbreaking “I Miss You,” a song he’s introduced live with this terrific setup: “This is a love song that I wrote for my first wife while I was married to my second…scared ‘em both!” An ode to a relationship that failed, but with lingering feelings of love and regret, it’s a killer tune, and I marvel that as much as Newman has made a career out of singing in character, the most interesting character may be himself.

Even in the masterwork, “The World Isn’t Fair,” in which Newman first summarizes Karl Marx’s political philosophy before having an imaginary conversation with the man himself, Newman inserts a comedic story about his own life to illustrate just how unfair the world has remained despite the hopes that communism may have initially generated:

Karl, I recently stumbled
Into a new family
With two little children in school
Where all little children should be
I went to the orientation
All the young mommies were there
Karl, you never have seen such a glorious sight
As these beautiful women arrayed for the night
Just like countesses, empresses, movie stars, and queens
They'd come there with men much like me
Froggish men, unpleasant to see

Despite the insertion of himself into some of his lyrics, there’s plenty of Newman’s trademark in-character songs, the most successful being the second track on the album, “Shame,” in which Newman plays a jealous, aging lover of a younger woman. He banters with his conscience, portrayed by background singers who interrupt his ramblings with the reprise: “Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame…”  He responds,

Could be right, I sunk pretty low this time

Ultimately, he tells the singers in his head to shut-up and offers a line that cracks me up each time I hear it:

You know, I have a Lexus now,
and I don't get out much
You know what I'm saying
Come on home

In “The Great Nations of Europe,” Newman gives us a somewhat comedic but also mournful history lesson on colonialism and its affect on The Guanche, a people who inhabited The Canary Islands until the 1600s:

Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone
You've never seen anyone so gone
They're a picture in a museum
Some lines written in a book
But you won't find a live one no matter where you look

Musically, Newman succeeds at many genres, from mournful ballads, an orchestral-backed march (“The Great Nations of Europe”), country-tinged rock (“Big Hat No Cattle”), American roots (“I Want Everyone To Like Me”), Latin-leaning ballad (“Better off Dead”), but somehow it’s all held together by Froom’s generally spartan production, with Newman’s vocals far out in front of the mix, few audible effects applied.

If there’s one modest miss on the album, it’s the penultimate track, “Going Home,” but at 2:06, it’s really just a brief interlude before the final song, “I Want Everyone To Like Me,” a funny number with a tinge of truth to it, and it’s fitting that Newman concludes his album on a personal note.

I want everyone to like me
That's one thing I know for sure
I want everyone to like me
'Cause I'm a little insecure

If I had to pick one Newman album to take with me to a desert island, Bad Love is the one. Some of Newman’s contemporaries continued to put out solid efforts late in their careers, (Jackson Browne’s Standing in the Breach" James Taylor’s Before This World, Paul Simon’s So Beautiful, So What), but Bad Love may be the best among them.