By the time Sail Away was finally released in the summer of 1972, Newman was already being pegged as a critic's songwriter, praised almost to the point of overadulation: the new album was declared a masterpiece by many reviewers, with the title track measured as his new high point in songwriting. The album received a five-star award from the Rolling Stone Album Guide and an A- rating from Christgau, as well as a mention among Greil Marcus' personal desert island discs list in his wonderful book Stranded.
Newman's compositions for the album are drawn from a six year spread -- from 1966's "Simon Smith" to 1970's "Lonely At The Top" to 1972's "Memo To My Son" -- and though the songwriting is uniformly strong, there is an odd patchwork feel to the album's assembly, especially when measured against the unified flow of 12 Songs. Individually, songs hold up well: "Burn On," puts a wry spin on an tribute to Ohio's heavily polluted Cuyahoga River ("The Lord can make you overflow ... /But the Lord can't make you burn"); "Old Man," a clear-eyed take on aging ("Won't be no God to comfort you/You taught me not to believe that lie/You don't need anybody/Nobody needs you/Don't cry old man, don't cry/Everybody dies"); and the deadpan erotica of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" ("Go on over there and turn on the light ... no, all the lights ... ./Now come back here and stand on this chair ... that's right/Raise your arms up into the air -- shake 'em ... ").
The arms race also gets skewered: "Political Science" (better known by its subtitle, "Let's Drop The Big One Now"), makes a Strangelove-style joke out of nuclear paranoia during the Cold War: "We give them money -- But are they grateful?/No, they're spiteful and they're hateful/They don't respect us -- So let's surprise them/We'll drop the big one and pulverize them ... ." Chided by some critics for his Tom Lehrer-styled approach to satire here, Newman admitted in a 1995 interview: "It isn't the type of song I want to write much of. Not that I didn't love Tom Lehrer, but I don't want to be ... like Don Henley says, 'What's this, another novelty song?' And I do write a lot of those, songs that are meant to be funny in a form that listeners take the people in it more seriously than literature."
Two songs that some listeners took more seriously address organized religion: the gentle "He Gives Us All His Love" could practically be taken as a straight hymn (from any artist other than Newman), and the utterly blasphemous "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)," which suggests (Newman typically tells his audience when performing the song live, "God is going to talk to you through me"): "Man means nothing/He means less to me than the lowliest cactus flower/Or the humblest yucca tree ... /How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me/That's why I love mankind."
An intriguing unreleased song, "Jesus In The Summertime," serves as a likely stepping stone in the development of "God's Song." Set to an even-tempered melody, this hymn-like song examines the place of the Lord in a couple's relationship: "Now we may not know all the answers/But after all we're so very young/I only know I get crazy when I'm not with my baby/ Jesus, can such a love be wrong?" The song's tone seems curiously respectful (in contrast to the merciless "God's Song") though the lyrics can softly etch questions in the listener's mind: "He said 'Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do'/He said 'Lord, what fools these mortals be'/And I say, 'Baby, I lay down my life for you /Just the way Jesus died for me/ Lord, why did you let your son die?/Bring him back in the summertime/Gotta have Jesus in the summertime.'" A memorable loss to the archives.
It was the album's title song, a scathing depiction of early American traders luring African slaves to the New World, that brought together Newman's string orchestration, elliptical piano riffs, and pitch-perfect lyrics together as one -- a near-perfect composition. Inevitably, artists lined up to claim it for their own, with results ranging from predictable (Linda Ronstadt, Bobby Darin) to lushly romantic (Nilsson) to groundbreaking: while the aching or near-wistful covers by Black Americans Ray Charles and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee can not help but invert and underscore the song's bitter ironies, their readings may be too direct to capture the smaller nuances -- the assured charm and inspired salesmanship ("Ain't no lions or tigers/Ain't no mamba snake/Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake") that make Newman's sly reading definitive.
In a rare bootleg recording of a 1972 radio show concert at Paul's Mall in Boston, titled simply Randy Newman - Boston (TMQ 73037), Newman sets up the song with an extended narrative, explaining how he and some other "big rock stars" like Elton John ("I call him Elton"), Morrison ("Van"), and Kristofferson ("Ol' Kris") were each asked to contribute ten minutes to a film ("It fell through. They couldn't pay for the cocaine or something ... ").
Newman's segment opens on a ship with sailors "doing sailorly things on board, you know ... ," as a group gathers around an old Irish storyteller who recites "The Ballad of Pat O'Reilly" (an obscure Newman original): "He was vain and he was boastful/He was hated by the mob/Young O'Mullen sought to make a fool of Pat/Well, he snatched O'Reilly's hat/ Wherein he shat a mighty shat/Ah, we laughed until we almost lost our senses ... " The song was performed through most of Newman's 1972 tour, serving as a lead-in to "Sail Away" (which itself was being reworked on stage, with the line "Won't have to sweat in the heat" changed to " ... scuff up your feet"). Enter Newman ("a brooding anti-hero, Warren Beatty type"), as the action moves to a jungle amphitheatre where the ship's band is entertaining the hundreds of natives with standards like "Campdown Races." The lights dim. Newman closes with this sung promise: "In America, you'll get food to eat/Won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet/You'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day/It's great to be an American..."
The album's only single release, "Sail Away"/"Political Science" (REP 1102), sank into oblivion ("Political Science" was reissued in 1980 on WBS49223, backed with "Spies" from Born Again ); a promo-only issue of "Memo To My Son" (in mono) was backed with a unique "horn mix" of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" (REP 1123). Related song covers include Art Garfunkel's cloying take on "Old Man," accapella takes on "Lonely At The Top" by both the Bobs and the Nylons, and Fanny's heavy metal assault on "Last Night I Had A Dream."
A few outtakes have been traced to this period, among them "Let It Shine," a piano and vocal demo written (but not sold) for a television pilot.