Randy Newman

Watching an episode of Black Mirror ("Fifteen Million Merits," 2011), I looked up the song that Jessica Brown Findlay sang (“Anyone Who Knows What Love Is”), and reeled back to find Randy Newman’s name next to Jeannie Seally. I started going through discogs.com and finding a buried history of tracks he’d written for others during his long apprenticeship before landing his own record deal in 1968. Many of these, including a baller like “I Think It’s Goin to Rain Today,” took hold long before he started singing his own material and “Sail Away” wound up in Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train. Three years ago, Randy Newman wrote a PSA for KPCC, his local radio station. He turns 80 on November 30.