Randy Newman - Trouble in Paradise
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Randy NewmanEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1990-10-25
Music Label: Reprise / Wea
Soundtracks:
- I Love L.A.
- Christmas in Cape Town
- The Blues
- Same Girl
- Mikey's
- My Life Is Good
- Miami
- Real Emotional Girl
- Take Me Back
- There's A Party At My House
- I'm Different
- Song For The Dead
Free Music Notes for Trouble in Paradise
Free Music Review: Where his piano lay in wait for him...
Hit: 4 Stars
Of all of Randy Newman's 'modern' albums (basically, everything from Little Criminals to Faust, "Trouble in Paradise" is probably my favorite. Less mean in spirit than Born Again and more pop oriented than all the rest of his catalog, "Paradise" was Newman at his wittiest. There was even a pair of almost hits.
The deceptive "I Love LA" became one of those songs that people sang along to oblivious to the songs barbs. "Look at that bum over there man, down on his knees" probably isn't the most civic minded lyric...but that nod to the big nasty redhead by his side and the Beach Boys blaring fooled everyone. Then there was the spoof of "The Blues," with Paul Simon playing into type with the pity party chorus and Newman opening the song with lyrics so bleak they should be a country hit.
Aside from those two, the rest include the biting anti-apartheid song "Christmas In Capetown." "Mikey" bemoans all the old hangouts that have been buried under techno, as the aging patron cries "what ever happened to the fu#*!ng 'Duke of Earl?" The character song that closes the album, "Song For The Dead," is among Newman's best. It is also just as prescient now as it was in 1983.
My personal favorite is "My Life Is Good." Sending up the yuppies who think their world is little more than a HOV lane to entitlement, it takes a jaded look at parents who use students as status markers. The parent who then mock brags that you better do as he tells you because he hangs with Springsteen...then a pseudo-Clarence Clemons solo blares away. It's perfect parody, and the high point of "Trouble In Paradise." It's also the reason that I still have a soft spot for the album.
Trouble in Paradise Poster
He's written some of the thorniest, darkest vignettes ever tucked into the verses and chorus of a pop song, but Randy Newman's greatest commercial successes have come with his most ephemeral material. "Short People" was a throwaway, albeit a terrific one, but it catapulted him onto pop charts and generated controversy among dim-bulbs who didn't realize he was kidding. Dwarfing that hit (pun intended) was "I Love L.A.," which has become an anthem despite the squalor of its imagery and Newman's hilarious inclusion of some of the ugliest thoroughfares imaginable in his litany of glorious local streets. Trouble in Paradise thus derives much of its familiarity from this one romping gag, yet its best songs tilt toward Newman's darker side, none more so than "Christmas in Capetown," which reconstructs the holiday through the eyes of an Afrikaner racist. Ho, ho, ho. --Sam SutherlandPop Music CDs
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