Randy Newman

Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman (born November 281943) is an Academy Award- winning American songwriter, arranger, composer, singer and pianist who is notable for his mordant (and often satirical) pop song and for his many film scores. Newman is noted for his practice of writing lyrics from the perspective of a "character" far removed from Newman's own biography, often utilizing the literary device of an unreliable narrator. For example, the 1972 song "Sail Away" is written as a slave trader's sales pitch to attract slaves, while the narrator of "Political Science" is a U.S. nationalist who complains of worldwide ingratitude toward America and proposes a brutally ironic final solution ("Let's drop the big one"). Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. His film score include Ragtime, The Natural, Toy Story, Meet the Parents and Seabiscuit. He also scored four other Pixar films: A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Cars. He has also been singled out for... full article at wikipedia