One can go back over Newman’s work and find any number of tunes that cry out to be heard, whether or not very many people actually did hear them there isn’t a song on Little Criminals that sounds as if it needed to be sung. Newman can’t put all of himself into a song as vague as “I’ll Be Home” or as pallid as “In Germany before the War,” because the songs contain so little of him. Neither Newman’s performances nor his words carry the conviction needed to put across his situational ironies, gnomic narratives and skewed moral tales in fact, this time around, the ironies, morals and narratives seem too slight to elicit conviction. The songs aren’t even funny they lack bite. Little Criminals offers all the minor charms of Randy Newman’s music and none of the major ones: craft without vision, which means the craft is uninspired. God knows what other times he might be a star for. One is as established as such a performer can be and, it seems, is settling into an acceptance of the refusal of the great audience to accept him the other is new on the scene and, just possibly, a star for these times. ![]() ![]() Herewith, two rock & roll singers distinguished by their almost total disregard for the music and marketing strategies of their contemporaries.
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