Randy Newman's songs are full of double-edged wit, laced with just enough tragedy between the lines. If you don't listen carefully, you could mistake "Sail Away" as a patriotic song with a rousing gospel chorus—only it's sung by a recruiter on a slave ship. "He Gives Us All His Love" is, seemingly, a hymn—except it calls into question how much God really cares. And after all these years, nobody's written a better song about headwear as a fetish object than "You Can Leave Your Hat On".
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