Riley on Robert Hilburn’s Randy Newman Biography
Journalism associate professor and music critic Tim Riley reviewed A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman by Robert Hilburn for the LA Review of Books.
Award-winning singer and songwriter Randy Newman recently made headlines for selling his song catalog to Litmus Music.
Unlike Newman’s unreliable song narrators, Hilburn plays his all-access status safe. No rival voices call out any weaknesses, no other songwriters puzzle over Newman’s intricacies. But sometimes a rare glimmer of hubris shoots through: “I resent Paul Simon’s belief in himself as a poet,” Newman says. “I resent his pretension. I don’t like people who never come out of the meadow. Or never make a sound louder than ‘Ah.’” In other places, Newman sounds far kinder to his New York rival.
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