Walt Disney Records:
Biography of Randy Newman
Composer/songwriter Randy Newman brings his special brand of whimsy and lyrical storytelling to three new songs featured on Walt Disney Records' Toy Story soundtrack, including "I Will Go Sailing No More" and "Strange Things." Newman also wrote "You've Got a Friend in Me," a duet he performs with recording artist Lyle Lovett. He also worked on the soundtrack to Walt Disney Pictures' James and the Giant Peach.
The Grammy Award®-winning composer, best known for his witty and ironic lyrics on such hit songs as "Short People" and "I Love L.A.," is a musical composition graduate from UCLA. He began his professional career at 17, when he took a job as a writer with a Los Angeles music publishing company. He was born into a musical family -- both of his uncles, Alfred and Lionel, were legendary film composers -- so this seemed a natural path for Newman to follow.
His flourishing pop-music career began in 1967 with a recording contract with Warner Music. For more than two decades, through 11 albums and seven film scores, Newman has delivered a succession of hits that have earned him critical praise, as well as the reputation as the wittiest composer in pop music. His debut vocal album, Randy Newman, was released in 1968, followed by Twelve Songs (1970), Randy Newman Live (1971), and Sail Away (1972). The late seventies saw the release of three quintessentially Newmanesque albums: Good Ol' Boys (1974); Little Criminals (1978), featuring the million-selling hit "Short People"; and Born Again (1979). In 1983, he released Trouble in Paradise, and, in 1988, the quasi-autobiographical Land of Dreams.
In 1982, Newman turned his attention to motion pictures, and his music for Ragtime garnered Academy Award® nominations for Best Original Score as well as Best Original Song for "One More Hour." He followed up with a Grammy Award® and a second Oscar® nomination for instrumentals in The Natural, starring Robert Redford. Newman went on to create notable scores for such distinguished motion pictures as Parenthood, Avalon, Awakenings, Maverick, and The Paper, receiving a total of six Oscar® nominations.
His recent musical comedy, Randy Newman's Faust, for which he wrote the book, music, and lyrics, is a comic twist of Goethe's legend, told in traditional Newman fashion. The stage version of Faust premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, winning rave reviews. To coincide with the premiere of the show, Newman released the highly acclaimed Faust album (Reprise Records), which features vocal performances by Elton John, James Taylor, Don Henley, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and Newman himself as the Devil.
Newman's work also appears in Walt Disney Pictures' stop-motion animated feature James and the Giant Peach, based on the enormously popular book by Roald Dahl. Directed by Henry Selick (Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas), the film features five great new Randy Newman songs, sung by an all-star cast of animated bugs.