Good Old Boys

One again confronting the demons of trying to independently listen to an artist that my dad adores. I respond Randy Newman's writing enough to know that one pass isn't enough to uncover his layer's of satire and rhetoric skills, but I really enjoyed the relaxing vibes.

If you can make it to the end of the first song and past the racial slurs, what you get is actually a really fascinating condemnation of the carceral state and de facto segregation present (to this day) in much of the non-Southern states. That part actually serves a critical purpose in the song in not letting non-Southerners off the hook and view the rest of this concept album about life in the (often poorer parts of the) South with the derision that many outside of the region have for it. The rest of the album does a good job capturing that experience and making it into an interesting, if not somewhat repetitive, piece of art. But still, at least -2 stars for making me explain why a white guy was saying the n-word with a hard r in the 1970s as part of his art. I fully believe Newman knew better, but still.

That first song is crazy and the rest of the album kinda sucks? What am I missing? Randy Newman’s voice certainly is good and unique but other than that? Idk man.

Oh hey it's your opening racist uncle singing shitty songs

There isn't a bad song here but as an album it becomes very tedious

Interesting album. I mainly know Randy Newman through Toy Story and a handful of other film soundtracks, so this was quite a departure! Obviously, some of the lyrics are pretty shocking by today’s standards, particularly the racial slurs, which I imagine Newman himself would be unlikely to use if he were writing it today. But I think dismissing the album as simply racist misses something important about his approach to songwriting. His lyrics are often character-driven, adopting the perspectives of deeply flawed people rather than necessarily expressing his own views. I somehow doubt he’s genuinely declaring himself a redneck intent on keeping Black people down! There’s a difference between portraying prejudice and endorsing it, even if you don’t agree with the language used to make that point. I also wonder whether this kind of narrative songwriting is sometimes lost on modern audiences, particularly when we’re so accustomed to artists singing from their own perspectives. Newman seems to trust the listener to recognise the satire without spelling everything out. It’s a provocative, divisive and distinctly Randy Newman album. I probably wouldn’t listen to it in its entirety again, as I found it a little repetitive musically, but there’s something quite charming about its laid-back sound. You could almost have it playing in the background at a dinner party, provided you skip track one! 🤣

'Yes, he's free to be put in a cage in Harlem, New York City / & he's free to be put in a cage in the South Side of Chicago & the West Side.' Sorry, but like Mark Twain, Newman knew what the fuck he was doing. 'Rednecks' is a brilliant, biting, strangely uplifting track that's undoubtedly a kind of salve for our America: 'Well, he may be a fool, but he's our fool.' Good Old Boys is more than that opening tune, however. Newman is very obviously one of our best songwriters, something like Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, McCartney, or any other wit of the industry, but he's got that real blues thing also. My only problem w/ Good Old Boys is my problem w/ all of Newman's best - I don't love his voice. I like it, I e'en admire it, but I don't love it. It gets old.

this was okay? and def doesn't hold up with the times :/

There’s just enough here that compels me that I don’t actively dislike it, but I also don’t think I will revisit it much.

..

Given that this album came out in 1974 some of the questionable lyrics are (I guess) understandable for the time period. Most of the songs are ok individually, but as a whole album it was uninspired.

Off the concept of Rednecks, I'm interested. 01. Rednecks It's so fascinatingly bizarre how well this song has aged. Actual fine wine. Good on Randy for not using the hard R! 02. Birmingham I love how bubbly the sound is compared to the dark lyrics lol. Great track! 03. Marie The lyrics and instrumentation is beautiful, but I don't think Randy can do slower ballads like this, vocally. 04. Mr. President (Have Pity On The Working Man) Really great lyrics, but sonically is fairly boring. Wasn't interesting besides the lyrics, 05. Guilty Is the most boring and basic of the album thus far. Doesn't do much for me, even lyrically. 06. Louisiana 1927 Really, really pretty. Fantastic lyrics, too. Those strings are gorgeous. 07. Every Man A King Really fun parody of American tunes. Is short and sweet. 08. Kingfish A song stuck in its time. Huey Long isn't known to anyone anymore, so unless you do research on this, you won't get it. 09. Naked Man If I was alive in 1974, I would have found this hilarious. Ahead of its time, and is a fun song. 10. A Wedding In Cherokee County Weirdly the funniest song to me. A very "if you're not paying attention" song. 11. Back On My Feet Again Just kind of okay compared to the rest of the album. 12. Rollin' A cool little, chilled out song to end it off. A very chill and cool album that speaks a bunch about the current state of America. I absolutely love the lyrics to this... but a lot of the instrumentation is SUPER one note, and all blends together after a while. Still, I enjoyed it enough.

Second album proposé après un ‘Sail away’ sans intérêt (noté 2/5). J’ai l’impression d’entendre une suite du précédent… Aussi peu inspirante : même accompagnement orchestral, même voix, même ennui. Il aurait pu faire un double album ! Pas de seconde écoute envisagée. =>2/5

Another songwriter who thinks he can sing. He has some good tunes and singers really like his material. But I am not a fan.

Remember that Family Guy episode. Pretty much sums up Randy Newmans works.

Randy Newman is unbelievably clever with his lyrics.

Rednecks runs into the same trouble as Fairytale of New York: its neat dramatic construction is heard outside the safe confines of sympathetic listeners. Those who recognise it as a wry work of art are prepared to accept it critically, though not without sympathy - and it warrants criticism, just not the kneejerk kind. Those who encounter it in the wild can be understandably shaken. Thankfully, Rednecks is neither so good nor so seasonal as Fairytale of New York, so you won't hear it on every radio station and in every DJ set come December. In fact, Rednecks really shouldn't be played on any radio station. But the consumerist drive of pop music is greater than its artistic one, and will somehow contrive to throw the song in the path of people who don't first hear it as a work of art (flawed or not). And satire, at that (flawed or not). To be fair to Randy Newman, he has largely avoided the consumerist side of pop music, even if his soundtracking work demonstrates that he has the chops. It is precisely his artistic bent that keeps him safe, to some extent. Rednecks, like every song on this album, and pretty much every Newman song, is written as a distinct character. Character is distinct from persona. Ice Cube, say, may perform an exaggerated image and rap about fictitious events, but these accumulate into the persona of Ice Cube. The persona is a marketing tool, a complete package, and each song acts as a single advertising and promoting that package. Newman's character songs do no such thing. Even on a failed concept album like Good Old Boys, where one character returns a few times, the songs live individually. They should be considered individually, as dramatic constructions rather than contributions to a larger self-portrait. Unfortunately for Newman, he is no actor, and his limited, nebbish vocal style can make the character work a little hard to follow. The overall effect is of a collection of demos for a stage musical: diligently executed, but the vocalist doesn't quite put himself out because it isn't really his song to sing. I don't know that I'd prefer a full cast recording though. Likely I wouldn't. Newman's limitations are charming, and a full-throated Broadway belt wouldn't necessarily wring more from the material. For all their lush string arrangements, these are essentially parlour exercises: tidy devices put together by a tinkerer, long thought over and overthought. Perhaps this artfulness takes some of the life out of the songs, a fate Fairytale of New York avoids! Newman's wit is often dry to the point of brittleness. Actual jokes are few, though there are some good ones in Naked Man. More often, the wit and satire depend on a structural reversal midway through the song. Rednecks is the most overt example. Back on My Feet Again is too absurd, while Birmingham and Marie are too subtle. That leaves Good Old Boys as a clutch of Fabergé eggs: worked on, exquisite in their way, but not up to much handling. 2.5 My goodness this popped nicely a day after Sufjan Stevens. Newman’s swing was most welcome after the awkward rigidity of Stevens’ music. But more than that - Newman is a superb songwriter and the arrangements are brilliant. The strings in Guilty and Louisiana 1927 aren’t just extra shine slapped on the chord - there are musical ideas in them. The opening of Kingfish is dazzling. Newman’s lyrics have none of the intellectual airs of Stevens’ and much more poetry. That said, I must give in to the temptation to talk about the lyric to Rednecks. I am baffled by the apparently widespread notion that this is a powerfully anti-racist song. It isn’t so much the repeated use of the N-word (although, don’t) as the plain fact that the song frankly excuses Southern institutional racism by ironising Northern contempt for it. No doubt ghettoisation in Northern cities was wicked but the sneers of Newman’s Redneck ‘character’ is a poorly judged vehicle for any moral objections if Newman felt them. There is certainly no balance in the historical scale between the deprivation in Harlem and the horrors of slavery in the plantations in the South. At best the song sets out a terribly convoluted moral logic, leaving plenty of space for - how should one put it? - scum to guffaw along with the song in 2026 as in 1974. Rednecks is a terrible blot on this record which is perfectly beautiful in other places. 2.5/5

731/1001 2026.10.26 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑

Nobody has ever doubted Randy Newman's cleverness, and I think his heart is in the right place also (gratuitous, allegedly satirical use of the n-word notwithstanding). So it’s sort of a pity that, for as witty and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny as he is here - and as nice as he sounds - this whole purported concept album about Southern-ness doesn’t quite add up to much. I get the feeling he’s engaging with the idea of the people he’s mocking rather than anything resembling their reality; it feels like he read *All the King’s Men* and watched *Deliverance* and decided he had enough material. As a Southerner myself I have a complicated enough relationship with my heritage already without some Angeleno trying to tell me how I feel.

a guy from the "Toy Story" soundtrack saying the n-word is staggered

I enjoyed this one much more than the other album on this list. I can't not think of Pixar though, which I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. A distracting thing. But, then again, there are the slurs. Honestly, it's a decent album all in all.

Wow, that opening song... The rest wasn't horrific, but not really my jam. Naked Man was pretty interesting, and those are definitely words I never expected to write.

okei ymmärrän mitä meinaat mut ei.

No, please. I just can’t.

Pretty nice

This was probably really diabolical slander back in the day.

OK

Probably could've done without this

It was ok

How can something feel so listenable and so bland at the same time? The lyrics are pretty solid and the musicality inoffensive but in 2026 it feels like this ground has been trodden a bunch of times since. The one thing I can put my finger on while listening to Louisiana 1927 is how almost twee and empty protest songs feel nowadays.

Solid Album

Imagine basically only knowing Randy Newman from Toy Story and then hearing Rednecks. I had barely processed “New York Jew” before the first n-word hit. I did not expect this kind of social commentary at all, but it was a welcome surprise.

Politically correct it is not

From the Wikipedia for this record, "It was Newman's first album to obtain major commercial success, peaking at number 36 on the Billboard 200." "Major" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. Let's be honest about it, Randy Newman is best heard in small doses. You've Got a Friend In Me, for example. Perfect. An excellent song for an excellent movie, but we get to move on quickly. No such luck when listening to a whole album of his nasally voice. That said, he is a very good writer and piano player and this album is better than anticipated. I actually made it all the way through! Rednecks was a fun song to listen to as was Mr. President. All in all, not bad.

Clever story telling songs

2/5 Unique voice. Not sure i really enjoyed it that much. But it was easy to listen too.

He diesn’t do a bad album but he doesn’t deviate much either. This is the second of his on the list and i feel i’ve heard it all in the other.

Ok mr toy story lets take a look at you again Rednecks, what the fuck? Wait its good? GG mr satire Mr. President Guilty!!! Groovy af mr toy story. Well made

As a black person, this gave me a good laugh. And then somehow there were songs that I liked LESS than getting hit with Rednecks in the middle of the work day. Really shocking stuff but maybe not the way he was hoping for. 2/5 Season: Merica Favorite Song: Guilty

Was not expecting an eruption of N-words from Randy Newman.

Я что к рутс-року ну не то что бы благосклонен, что к кантри.. но дэмн.. У этой пластинки есть свое лицо, есть характер и стиль. Это приятно слушается, а ещё Рэнди забавный чел похожий на смесь Мавроди и Weird Al Yankovic Некоторые треки ощущаются как классическая старая пабовая штука с этой характерной распевкой и клавишными, а что-то (как Marie) ощущается как любовная баллада со скрипкой.

I got the other Randy Newman album two days ago. It was a nice surprise and I enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to getting his other album. I just didn’t expect it would be this soon. This one is pretty good too, continuing his satirical songwriting with pretty catchy tunes. Fun stuff

Oh this was tough and it was largely because of this man using slurs but it also didn’t sound good Playlist add: “Mr President (Have Pity On the Working Man)”

Really not my style

Even if this is satire it’s not something for listening aloud to. The first line of the first song is enough to tell you that. Do I like the music? No.

ehhh. never really dug this guys schtick

All I hear is Pixar songs

I understand this album was released over 50 years ago, and it was intended as satire... but I have a hard time imagining there was a point where this wouldn't just been seen as egregiously offensive. I'll throw a second star because the instrumentation is fun and unique, but for someone who was celebrated as a lyricist and storyteller, they're what lost me.

This one really comes in hot, doesn’t it. 😬 Might have eked out a 4 if not for all the N-words.

I've never been a fan of Randy Newman's voice and compositions, and this album doesn't really change that, though it is clear on this album that he found his 'sound' that would define him for the next 50 years. I know that this album is not racist, and those who find it racist are not listening to the lyrics carefully enough. This album does commit the sin of being incredibly BORING. So, it comes as no surprise that I don't find this album essential at all to the canon of Western popular music. About the only songs he composed that I actually enjoy and can appreciate is "You've Got a Friend" from Toy Story and "Mama Told Me Not to Come" performed by Three Dog Night. My favorite piece of his work is the scoring of The Natural. Perhaps he should have just stayed in the family business of scoring films. I'm a bigger fan of his cousin Thomas Newman's film scores.

Some great moments on this, strong entry even with a 3 star score

Did not expect this from the guy that made the Toy Story music. Random racial slurs and unfortunately just pretty boring songs

- to dedicate more time -

Always funny with a little satire thrown in.

Day994 - it’s 1974 the republicans are in charge, there’s a war in the middle east, gas prices are through the roof, the fbi is spying on americans, civil rights are trampled on. thank goodness we’ve always had artists and satirists to get us through. randy newman really skewers the ones that need it

Decent.

Mmmm ok.. I guess. Not bad, I don't mind having it on the background, but I wouldn't choose it in purpose.

I’m not the type of person who throws the word “racist” at every turn or opportunity, but this one is pretty simple, I didn’t like this album because of its continuous use of the “N” word. While I understand that Good Old Boys is meant to be a satirical critique of racism, particularly in the American South, I don’t believe in recreating the language and imagery of racism under the guise of critique. It feels classless, and to me, it’s a low form of energy and entertainment.

initially annoying, then charming, nice to have

I wasn't in the mood for this, but I'll probably revisit it one day.

Just not my thing, I can safely conclude after like 4 Randy Newman albums. Objectively it's not bad, but not really my thing. Humor has not aged all too well on some tracks but that doesn't really bother me much. I guess I just don't like lyrically oriented music that much to begin with, especially when it's mostly a humorous effort rather than sad or angry. Can't really dislike it, it's short and decent enough to listen to.

The first song is one of the most racist things I’ve listened too. Otherwise the album was good but I’m not rating it high.

Buen album

If there's such a thing as a "Randy Newman sound" this is it. It's a fine record, but you could be forgiven for singing along to the Toy Story song on top of some of the tracks here.

This was fine. 3.3

Honestly... I can't unsolder this singer from toy story ^^' low-level american pop with not the slightest hint of harshness

Álbum muito agradável e que te transposta para um lugar aconchegante durante a audição. Tangzu Wan'er 2.

Wow hard R huh?

That first song certainly was one of the protest songs of all time

I don't really understand the appeal of Randy Newman. He's a solid songwriter but his vocals are something to be desired.

So bad. Not worth a listen, nothing redeemable here. Kick it off the list. Best track: none Worst tracks: all Rating: 1/10

I think it’s a fine album, the concept is interesting and the songs are pretty good, weird hearing the guy who sings you got a friend in me say the n-word definitely a bit jarring. This gives me the same vibe of ccr though 2 artists from California portraying themselves as southern for the aesthetics.

The sad part is, I now feel confused about Toy Story. Was Andy rascist?!

Some paintings are Sunflowers, others are Guernica. A beautifully made bitter pill. Louisiana 1927 is an all timer.

Goede songs, goede songschrijver.

Es el de tu amigo fiel de toy story!!! Y pues así suena pero con unas letras rarísimas que no sabes si son irónicas o simple y abiertamente racistas. Aun así medio huevita con su estilo

I don't think you're allowed to do that 🤨🤔

Он же очевидный приколист

Beware beware beware of the naked man!

I was not quite prepared for that first track

Woah. That first song has a shockingly high n-word per minute. The fact that Randy did not waver from his signature musical style just makes it that much more grating. But moving past the most surprising track I've heard in these 400+ albums, I have to say Randy was extremely disappointing. This record is supposed to be one of his best, and while lyrically and thematically he's on to something, musically this is just not working for me. Nearly every song is a blues, hitting a 7th chord into the turnaround the exact same way every time, at the same dull, lazy tempo. I was just bored to tears, man. I'm sorry. I know someone out there will love this, and that someone is probably much more interested in deciphering lyrics than I am. I just don't have the energy for this kinda stuff any more. TWO STARS

I am clearly the wrong generation for this album Middle of the Road, Easy Listening simply does not warrent my attention or ear-space This one was so bad, even with heavy skipping, I simply could not make it to the end TRASH

All I could hear was Toy Story! His voice is so nostalgic.

Drunken, mumbling piano-bar storytelling jazz blues. Billy Joel if he'd read Charles Bukowski.

What. The. Fuck? Toy Story will never be the same again

Was fine, not really into country music.

Better than his other album, but if there were two albums by Randy Newman in this list, one of them should have been a soundtrack.

++: Redneck, Birmingham, Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man), Guilty, Louisiana 1927, Every Man a King, Kingfish, Naked Man, A Wedding in Cherokee County, Back on My Feet Again, Rollin' +: Marie 9,5/10

Enjoyment: 3/10 Replayability: 3/10 Cohesion: 3/10 Flow/Pacing: 3/10 Artistic Merit: 2/10 Weighted Average: 2.85/10 Review: Putting Randy Newman on this list is an... interesting choice. Most of the tracks are the same and he drops slurs like it's nobody's business, even if it's supposed to be satire. Liked Song(s): Marie, Every Man a King Disliked Song(s): Rednecks Recommend? No Heard Before? No

Never heard before Not bad. I do like his voice and the album flowed nicely. No particular track jumped out as special but I was quite comfortable listening to it and I would happy give it another go.

He wasn't too short. Good album.

It's a pretty decent album. I liked it, but it wasn't the greatest album ever. The influence of Jazz is heard but it's more like Randy Newman's own genre. Good album!

laughing at the idea of a family loving toy story so much they buy this and get blasted with that opening song

i love this guy!! wish i had listened in a more focused way (not while working) so i could really #get #it. planning to do a randy newman deep dive on my next long drive...

7/10

Tuesday, 1 September, 2026 At first, I was not a fan. The music is very good, but Randy newsman’s lyricism and vocal delivery are not my cup of tea. But then I was reading about the album and I listened again. It is a tremendous work. I am still not a Randy Newman fan, but this record is important.

easy to listen to and he can obviously write, but this man should not be performing. nothing sounds finished.

After the first song, I was expecting this to be a very sardonic album, and while it is, the album allows itself to show a human side from time to time. That combined with some bouncy arrangements and Newman’s voice made this an enjoyable listen.

Sometimes joyful, sometimes boring, it is not all bad, but really not much. 5/10

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