Day 8: A Stretch

Two great American songwriters in one post.

Today’s song is “Snow” as performed by Harry Nilsson. I’ve written about Nilsson before, so I’m not going to cover that again.

Nilsson didn’t write this song, though. It was written by the great Randy Newman, and I’m including it specifically so I can talk about him.

Most people know Randy Newman for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and the other music from the Toy Story movies. Slightly older folks remember “I Love LA” and “Short People,” two songs that rank up there with “Sweet Home Alabama” on the list of most frequently misinterpreted music. (Lynyrd Skynyrd campaigned for Jimmy Carter.)

Newman is an architect of pitch-black irony. His albums Sail Away and Good Old Boys are all-time classics—those two alone pack more musical, cultural, and philosophical punch than most Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Let’s look at the lyrics to “Sail Away,” the first track on that album, sung in his folksy drawl:

In America you get food to eat
Won’t have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet
You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day
It’s great to be an American

So far so good. He’s talking about how great America is! Super!

Then he promises there are no lions and tigers or mamba snakes. “Hmm,” we start to wonder, “to whom, exactly, is he talking?”

And then comes the chorus, with a beautiful, stirring swell of strings that hits like a punch in the gut:

Sail away, sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay

Oh Jesus Christ. The narrator is taking slaves to the New World.

Has there ever been another songwriter with the sheer gall to take on this subject in this way? None that I know of.

And Good Old Boys, his follow-up to that one, takes on one of the most challenging tasks one can imagine: Humanizing (without romanticizing) the sterotypical dumbass, know-nothing redneck.

Check out “Rednecks,” in which the narrator presents his love for Lester Maddox (“he may be a fool, but he’s our fool”), throws around the n-word, makes it clear that he openly embodies every stereotype on the books about white Southerners, and then, right around the 2:10 mark in the song, unleashes a tirade on the entire rest of the country, berating them for smugly patting themselves on the back without doing anything to confront the systemic racism that is fully baked into every part of this country.

It’s a brilliant, unsettling bit of songcraft, and the entire album fully lives up to that standard. Listen to “Guilty” a few times, and that last line starts to sound like a door slamming.

So anyway, here’s “Snow.” As far as I know Newman has never recorded this one himself, but he apparently wrote it.

Pretty good tune. It’s not a Christmas song but it does mention snow, so I decided it counts. Really I just wanted to talk about Randy Newman.

Notes:

• Think for a moment about your conception of God. Now go listen to Randy Newman’s “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind).” Turn it up and listen closely to the lyrics. It makes my hair stand on end, every time.