What Are You Doing, Randy?

It's really a shame when you have to sit and watch a performer devolve into senility — especially when that musician was never really that great in the first place. Case in point: Randy Newman, that silly pianist who likes to barely sing about very obvious things (that parody of him on Family Guy comes to mind). He was the capper performance at this year's Macworld keynote address.

Rather than just sticking to his repertoire of Disney songs that all sound the same, he decided to grace the audience with a new song about America. He prefaced the song by telling everyone about a recent visit to Europe in which he learned that they "don't like us." This revelation was such a surprise to Newman that he was compelled to write a ditty that defends America.

His noble plan to defend our nation was merely a MacGuffin to allow him to get to the heart of the matter: he thinks America is dying.

The song starts simply enough (like most of his music) and quickly makes the claim that America currently has the worst leaders in the nation's history; thankfully, they aren't the worst the world has ever seen. No, Newman proceeds to tell us about Rome and the various Caesars—and he keeps going into silly and confusing details about rulers hanging out with little boys and appointing cousins as vice presidents. He then moves on to the Spanish Empire and rhymes "inquisition" with "position." His allusions to America being a falling empire are neither subtle nor appropriate within the song, and the whole thing comes off as forced and ignorant.

His disdain for America doesn't stop there; Newman proceeds to pull out the quotable FDR handbook and then inform us that we live in a society in which we fear fear... because terrorism = fear. That message is so 2005, and yet Newman carries on like we've never heard this argument before. Oh my gosh he's right, we are just afraid of a synonym for being afraid! Why didn't I see it before? He carries on, shrugging it off with the childishness that made him the Hollywood go-to-guy for songs that are as deep as a matchbox.

Randy's "America sucks" song was a strange choice for an Apple keynote performance. We'll never know if Apple knew what he was going to sing before he went out, and I'd prefer not to know if they actually believed all that (although the politics of Steve Jobs is no real secret, and Al Gore is on their board... so that tells you something). Perhaps this was the best Randy could get. While other leftist musicians get large forums to spout their beliefs about America being the scourge of the world, the best venue Randy Newman could secure was a tech convention in a room full of geeks. He did end his song with a little rambling speech about how much he hates corporations, but not Apple (of course)... and not 20th Century Fox, mainly because they give him money.

Pushing any sort of political statement at what is essentially one of the biggest consumer announcements of your fiscal year isn't the smartest move. I'd feel just as uncomfortable if Newman was up there ranting about how great President Bush is. When you're trying to sell something to mainstream consumers you don't necessarily want to take political sides—and if you do, don't let some senile nitwit like Randy Newman do it for you.

Watch his god-awful performance here.