Cover artwork for Randy Newman’s “Trouble In Paradise”
Perhaps for the first time, “Trouble In Paradise” presented a Randy Newman who made things a little too easy for himself. But this Randy Newman was still better than most other songwriters of his generation.
In the 1970s he had without exception produced masterful records and had duped the soft rock poets of the West Coast without them noticing. With “I Love LA” in 1983, he delivered his swan song to the Californian way of life. In the video for the song, Newman drives down the Pacific coast in a convertible and poses among bathing beauties on Venice Beach.
Duet with Paul Simon
“Christmas In Capetown” is still disturbing today: with ghost organ and pig rock riffs, we look through hedonistic glasses into the hell of colonialism, where the poorest feast on the blessings of pop culture.
“The Blues” with duet partner Paul Simon remains a curiosity and was probably intended to be something of a hit at the time. “My Life Is Good,” in which Newman imagines himself as a Springsteen replacement, is a far better joke.
The most underrated albums of all time
Without concerts and festivals, we suddenly found ourselves looking back at our record collections in the evenings and realized: Often it’s not the canonized classics that people particularly enjoy playing.
Instead, they are albums in the catalog of a beloved artist that you seem to have all to yourself because the rest of the world has spurned them or even forgotten them – misunderstood strokes of genius, overlooked masterpieces, neglected key works and records that are simply much better than their reputation and deserve a reevaluation.