Rounding out the concept album, Good Old Boys also included perhaps the most beautiful song that Newman ever wrote, “Louisiana 1927,” and two songs distilling the populist Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, “Every Man a King” and “Kingfish.”

Quoth the latter song, told from Long’s perspective:

I'm a cracker

And you are too

But don't I take good care of you Who built the highway to Baton Rouge?

Who put up the hospital and built you schools?

Who looks after shit-kickers like you?

The Kingfish do Who gave a party at the Roosevelt Hotel?

And invited the whole north half of the state down there for free

The people in the city

Had their eyes bugging out

Cause everyone of you

Looked just like me

(Before Twitter, populists actually delivered spoils to their supporters rather than expecting them to stay loyal based on no more than occasional demagogic missives.)

Now let’s skip ahead to 1979. The album is Born Again, the song, “It’s Money That I Love,” a straightforward if exaggerated portrayal of an ethos you’ll no doubt recognize:

I don't love the mountains / I don't love the sea

I don't love Jesus / He never done a thing for me

I ain't pretty like my sister / Or smart like my dad

Or good like my mama It's money that I love

It's money that I love They say that's money / Can't buy love in this world

But it'll get you a half-pound of cocaine / And a 19-year-old girl

And a great big long limousine / On a hot September night

Now that may not be love but it is all right

A few years later, he released Trouble in Paradise, an album best known for “I Love L.A.” The song would play at the Great Western Forum during Lakers games when I was a kid, in spite of those inevitable Newman twists that distinguished it from boosterism:

From the South Bay to the Valley

From the West Side to the East Side

Everybody's very happy

'Cause the sun is shining all the time

Looks like another perfect day I love L.A. (we love it)

I love L.A. (we love it)

We love it Look at that mountain

Look at those trees

Look at that bum over there, man

He's down on his knees

Look at these women

There ain't nothing like 'em nowhere

While Trouble in Paradise touches on everything from apartheid to the changing demographics of Long Beach as experienced by a white old-timer who doesn’t much like his new neighbors, its best tracks, by my lights, capture the particular entitlement of wealthy Southern Californians so adeptly that I’m still marveling. The self-indicting portrait of the narrator in “Take Me Back” is deliciously subtle. And here’s a bit of “My Life Is Good,” an upbeat song that zeroes in on the essence of a character nearly anyone associated with a private school in a wealthy area has met:

The other afternoon my wife and I

Took a little ride into Beverly Hills

Went to the private school our oldest child attends

Many famous people send their children there

This teacher says to us "We have a problem here

This child just will not do a thing I tell him to.

And he's such a big old thing. He hurts the other children.

All the games they play, he plays so rough..." Hold it teacher / Wait a minute

Maybe my ears are clogged or somethin'

Maybe I'm not understanding the English language

Dear, you don't seem to realize: My life is good

My life is good, you old bag

So many Newman characters, for all their different milieus, share an abiding disregard for the effect that their actions and attitudes have on those around them. That theme is exaggerated for effect on a track from the 1988 album Land of Dreams:

I ran out on my children / And I ran out on my wife

Gonna run out on you too baby / I done it all my life

Everybody cried the night I left / Well almost everybody did

My little boy just hung his head / I put my arm put my arm around his little shoulder / And this is what I said: "Sonny I just want you to hurt like I do

I just want you to hurt like I do

I just want you to hurt like I do

Honest I do honest I do, honest I do"

The same character carried his disregard for his family over to his attitudes toward the public:

If I had one wish / One dream I knew would come true

I'd want to speak to all the people of the world

I'd get up there, I'd get up there on that platform

First I'd sing a song or two (you know I would)

Then I'll tell you what I'd do I'd talk to the people and I'd say

"It's a rough rough world, it's a tough tough world

And things don't always go the way we plan

But there's one thing we all have in common

And it's something everyone can understand

All over the world sing along I just want you to hurt like I do ...

Honest I do, honest I do, honest I do”

Then, every so often, amid the awful characters and biting satire on Newman albums, the unreliable narrators are sent off on break, and Newman does deeply earnest with the best of them. In relief, the gut-punch quality of the songs are accentuated.