But for now you’re going to have to trust me, or dig out your old records or CDs or get ready to spend a few bucks at the iTunes store. If I’d waited a year or three longer to write this piece, maybe you would be able to click on an icon and hear some of the stuff I’m about to talk about. More likely, if you’ve come this far with me, you are sort of a fan of Newman’s or at least intrigued by him, or else you’re intrigued by the fact that someone would want to write this kind of essay - extraordinarily strange for a newspaper - about him. I say he is our greatest singer-songwriter, an underappreciated American. That might sound like a weird statement, if you think of Newman (if you think of him at all) as the croaky singer of a couple of weird novelty songs. He has been an important artist in my life since I was in junior high school, and a lot of what I’ve tried to do in my life has a lot to do with the music he has made over his improbably long, improbably strong career. Even if you don’t want to hear it, he makes you listen because of the way he tells it. One thing you need to know is it is not that easy.Another thing is the real artist doesn’t tell you about himself, he tells you about you. Or that some lady named Charlene had been “undressed by kings” and had “seen some things, that a woman’s not supposed to see.” We are lucky most of it never escapes the bedrooms of the teenagers who produce it, although from time to time it surfaces in public and those of us of a certain age can now never forget that Janis Ian learned the truth at 17. Most singer-song writerism is pretty awful stuff, born of the mistaken belief the heartfelt is always worthy of expression. If you are a certain kind of person, you may have the idea to trawl the dark waters of your gut for these raw, fresh, authentic sentiments and serve them up for public consumption. To be human is to hurt, and on occasion to be overtaken by violent emotion. You can tell what I’m like.” - Randy Newman, in Playboy in 1987 I don’t know what Fogelberg is like from his songs. In fact, I always thought people could tell what I was like from my stuff more easily than they necessarily could tell about a confessional kind of songwriter. Maybe that’s why I don’t sell two million records. LITTLE ROCK - “Maybe people want personal confessions.
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