A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman

Biographer Hilburn (Paul Simon) serves up an affectionate tribute to Randy Newman, the singer-songwriter and film score composer best known for “I Love L.A.” and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” Born in 1943 into a musical family (uncles Alfred, Lionel, and Emil composed scores for Hollywood films), Newman developed an early love for classical piano. He shifted his focus to pop music as a teen before becoming a professional songwriter as a young adult. Capturing the full sweep of Newman’s career, Hilburn examines how his self-conscious wit and predilection for character-driven storytelling, combined with his “Jewish intellectualism, political liberalism and a healthy dose of contrarianism,” resulted in lyrics that critiqued the moral state of American society. For example, 1983’s “Song for the Dead,” which is narrated by an American soldier stationed in Southeast Asia who must bury his dead comrades, interrogates the sacrifices made to support the Vietnam War. Throughout, Hilburn astutely analyzes how Newman uses literary devices like the unreliable narrator to probe the absurdities of “a strange and tragic period in [America’s] history.” In the process, Hilburn makes clear, Newman broadened the boundaries of what pop music can do. The result is an intimately detailed portrait of a vital American songwriter. (Oct.)