It is odd in hindsight that I was very aware of Randy Newman's Born Again at the age of 14. It has always been a favourite of mine. I looked it up on wikipedia and the story seems to be that not many people liked it when it came out. I guess it was RN's first album after he had a hit in his own right (with 'Short People') but of course he had had other hits previously but covered by other people.
I had a little listen. I think that really the drumming on 'It's Money That I Love' doesn't work, but it's the same drummer on 'The Story of a Rock 'n' Roll Band' and that drumming is amazing, especially all the toms after the bit about calling ELO 'The Renegades'. That song btw is still hilarious almost 50 years later.
Perhaps it's the sequencing that people didn't like, or someone should have put all the 'dark' songs on one side and the 'funny' ones on the other, that might have worked, whether they were labelled as such or not. I mean 'Pretty Boy' is such a great track in itself and would undoubtedly go on the 'dark' side though I suppose it might have flummoxed a few people at the time because its narrator is, I guess, homophobic and this was a time when that was cool. 'Ghosts' goes on the dark side too.
I remember in 1979 or 80, whenever I heard the album (it came out in late '79) talking with a friend about the song 'Mr Sheep' and how weird it was (it really isn't) but I think possibly what we were reacting to was the unreliable narrator who is a prick, then starts to be conciliatory, then becomes a prick again. These days I really like that but then it possibly confounded me.
'They Just Got Married' possibly troubled me as well because while it is kind of resolved, it seems to portend a terrible outcome, but it really doesn't - the first wife dies and the second one seems a bad choice but she is also very wealthy, so the second marriage might be (in the conventional way of thinking) a bad choice but it's also one that will at least end up with everyone being rich. I guess there's a kind of tossed-off feel to this too, which is not problematic for me now but might once have been, for me and everyone else.
Anyway, it's still my favourite RN album, I will listen to it again soon (I had it playing on spotifuck while I was in the supermarket and it just cut off at the end of side one, I don't know why but it was ok as I had to go and stand at the checkout while two ladies who both worked for Woolworths one of whom was buying stuff but had some discount coupons, fiddled over the coupons for an excessively long time which I decided to be nice about because a smile costs nothing).
