Sail Away by Randy Newman

Sail Away, Randy Newman's third album, came out on Reprise on May 23, 1972, and it's the work of a Los Angeles songwriter with a film-score family tree and a scalpel for a pen. Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman produced, and every song is Newman's own, even if a few had already turned up in other singers' hands before he got around to cutting them himself.

What sets his versions apart is the delivery: that lazy, Southern-tinged drawl, a piano that sounds like it wandered in off an old Hollywood soundstage, and lyrics that let a dubious narrator hang himself with his own words. "Political Science" shows the method at its sharpest, a bright, bouncy tune with a sting in its tail, the kind of song that makes you laugh first and wince a second later.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.