Randy Newman, the singer-songwriter and composer, stopped in at the Rose Center for Earth and Space the other day, in the hope of glimpsing some dark matter. Newman, who is seventy-three, has just released “Dark Matter,” the first album of his own songs in nine years. These days, his second career, writing music for Pixar films, takes up much of his time. The Hollywood Randy Newman, the composer of light matter such as “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from the first “Toy Story” film, occasionally steps aside to make way for the more brooding voice found in Newman’s classic albums from the seventies, such as “Good Old Boys” and “Sail Away.”
Newman’s movie work (he has two Oscars) also allows him the privilege of collaborating with real orchestras. “I love those hours in there with an orchestra,” he said on the way to the Rose Center, which is in the American Museum of Natural History. “It’s just as important to me, even when it’s ‘Cars 3’ ”—his latest movie score—“and you can’t hear what I wrote because of the—” He made the vroom sound of a race-car engine. “I grew up watching the musicians on a soundstage,” he went on. “And they seemed heroic to me.” He had on a short-sleeved shirt printed with images of musicians—a drummer, a bass violinist, a sax player.
“Dark Matter” is a reference to the album’s eight-minute-long opening track, in which a team of scientists and a choir of believers engage in a musical debate about three basic tenets of science: dark matter, evolution, and climate change.
“Clearly, you know which side I’m on,” Newman, a nonbeliever, said. “Faith wins because of what is connected with faith. Beethoven, Bach, gospel music, Shirley Caesar, who I saw last night.” (She and Newman performed at a Grammy salute to musical legends at the Beacon Theatre.) “The high ceilings,” he went on. “Can you imagine living in mud and going into a church and seeing those high ceilings? That’s tremendous. We don’t have anything like that on the atheist side.” Except, possibly, for the Hayden Planetarium, inside the Rose Center, where “Dark Universe,” a short film about the frontiers of astrophysics, plays throughout the day.
A group of children filed solemnly into the planetarium behind Newman. A voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please turn your attention to the video screens above. Your journey is about to begin.” The face of Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, appeared. “The universe is all around us, and within us,” he intoned. “Our minds, our hearts, everything we’ll ever see or touch.” Tyson welcomed the audience on a 13.8-billion-year journey to discover the “invisible cosmic constituents called dark matter and dark energy.”
Newman started writing songs because his childhood friend Lenny Waronker, who later became the president of Warner Bros. Records, suggested that he try it. “He knew who Carole King was and stuff. His dad had started a record company,” Newman said. “He was my courage for years.” Newman wrote songs about geography, history, and civil-rights issues. “I’m interested in stuff like that,” he said. “Sometimes I’m surprised that other people don’t do more of that. But I don’t think the medium is designed to edify, necessarily. It’s ‘I love you,’ ‘You don’t love me.’ It’s just that, and it’s been that for a thousand years. For good reason.” Later, when he began recording, he sang in a Cajun-tinged voice that drew on childhood visits from Los Angeles to New Orleans, his mother’s home town. “It was what came out of my mouth when I first started,” he said, and added, “I think it just sounds better to me to do that to the vowels.”
Twenty minutes later, Tyson was saying, “We stand on the threshold of great discoveries . . . and we always will . . . as long as we keep exploring!” The film ended in a wash of synthetic-sounding orchestral music.
Newman wasn’t moved to revise the debate on “Dark Matter.” Jesus still had the better soundtrack. “A real orchestra works better than what they gave this guy,” Newman said, of the space film’s score, as he waited with the children to exit. “I couldn’t hear anything real. Maybe a few violins. The rest was all synths. This was the bass player, this is first violin,” he said, holding up two fingers.
Still, he was heartened to have learned that ninety-five per cent of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy. “Fantastic,” he said. “Five per cent for all the rest. And my career is far less than that.” ♦
