Robert Hilburn, for­mer pop music crit­ic of the Los Ange­les Times, has writ­ten biogra­phies of John­ny Cash, Paul Simon, and Bruce Spring­steen, so Randy Newman’s sto­ry is right in his wheel­house. In over five hun­dred pages, Hilburn cov­ers Newman’s long song­writ­ing career — dis­cussing every album, film score, and award nom­i­na­tion. He reprints select­ed pas­sages or full lyrics of key songs, high­light­ing their con­tro­ver­sial ele­ments. Clos­ing chap­ters include appre­cia­tive com­ments from Newman’s chil­dren and thoughts about Newman’s plans going forward. 

Some of the most insight­ful sec­tions of the book are toward the begin­ning, as Hilburn explores the role of record labels in defin­ing a musician’s pro­file, the chal­lenges of build­ing an album, and the com­plex rela­tion­ships of lyri­cists, com­posers, and arrangers. He explains that before New­man, the the­mat­ic arc of pop was dom­i­nat­ed by love songs and (large­ly upbeat) sea­son­al tunes. New­man changed the game by writ­ing ​“mes­sage” songs, often infused with con­trar­i­an, down­beat points of view. And unlike many of his pre­de­ces­sors, who wrote for oth­ers to per­form, New­man wrote and per­formed in his own voice. 

Hilburn reports on the accom­plish­ments of Newman’s father and oth­er rel­a­tives as well as Newman’s two mar­riages and his five chil­dren. He empha­sizes that for New­man, music came first and fam­i­ly came sec­ond. Newman’s sec­ond wife learned from his first to demand his par­tic­i­pa­tion in fam­i­ly activ­i­ties. She was in charge of fam­i­ly life; in Hilburn’s opin­ion, this was ​“nat­ur­al,” since at the time, ​“near­ly half of the nation’s moth­ers were stay-at-home-moms.” 

Despite this book’s com­pre­hen­sive­ness in oth­er aspects, insight into Newman’s inte­ri­or life is some­what lack­ing. Many chap­ters are pref­aced with com­ments about New­man from oth­er artists — com­ments sim­ply reprint­ed, not explored fur­ther. Wes­ley Mor­ris, for instance, says New­man oper­ates ​“in the gap between mem­oir and mock­ery,” tak­ing aim at his ​“Jew­ish white­ness” — but these inter­est­ing ideas just hang there. 

In the acknowl­edge­ments, Hilburn says that after a cer­tain point, New­man had become ​“uncom­fort­able” talk­ing with him. Per­haps, out of deep respect for New­man, Hilburn decid­ed not to pur­sue dif­fi­cult top­ics. Per­haps Hilburn asked, but New­man stopped answer­ing. What­ev­er hap­pened, Hilburn has nonethe­less writ­ten a very thor­ough account of Newman’s artis­tic out­put, deserv­ing of recognition.