Word: songe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Washington needed a theme song for its Kosovo policy, the Beach Boys? "Wouldn?t It Be Nice" might be a strong contender. When Moscow stole a march on NATO last Saturday by seizing Pristina?s airport, it was simply the latest indicator that U.S. strategy in Kosovo has been premised on an unhealthy dose of wishful thinking. The result may have been not only to underestimate the complexity of the Balkans, but also to usher in an unpredictable and dangerous new period in international relations. "This whole thing hasn?t been well thought through," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell...
...speaker in My Country, the first song, is an oldster reminiscing about the dead old days of watching an antiseptic world on black-and-white TV ("We got comedy, tragedy/Everything from A to B"); he might be Pleasantville's sitcom dad, now neck high in self-pity. The next tune, Shame, is in the head of a rich coot ranting about the young woman (and the gun) he needs to be happy. The third song, I'm Dead (but I Don't Know It), is the plaint of a pop singer who, after 30 years, has "nothing left...
...Europe, accompanies a brilliantly bleak history of New World colonization, slaughter and disease ("Columbus sailed for India/ Found Salvador instead/He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead/They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot/Diphtheria and the flu/Excuse me--Great Nations coming through!"). The song's caustic end: that "some bug from out of Africa" might destroy America "like the great nations of Europe in the 16th century." You are permitted to gulp in horror as you hum along...
...Newman brothers--Alfred, Emil and Lionel, prolific composers from Hollywood's golden middle age--would have every reason to be proud of their nephew Randy. This year he was nominated for Oscars in three categories: dramatic score (for Pleasantville), musical or comedy score (A Bug's Life) and song (That'll Do, from Babe: Pig in the City). And since he lost in all three categories, as he did the nine previous times he was nominated, Randy Newman might feel a strange satisfaction as well: he's been writing about bitter losers and empty hallways since the Beatles had bowl...
Fine, some say, but does Newman have to sing his own songs? He has always sounded like a toothless varmint, clawing the arms of a backwoods rocking chair and spitting out his views on love and politics as if they were gobs of rancid tobacco juice. But at 55, he has grown into the crabbiness of his voice, one that both feels pain and dishes it out. It perfectly suits the fables in this creepily beautiful CD, a sermon not from the mount but from the depths. Newman deserves to be cynical about everything but his supreme gift for telling...