Randy Newman's Most Famous Movie Songs

Born November 28, 1943, Randy Newman has become well-known for his Americana-influenced songs and his distinctive Southern singing style. Newman would begin his career at the young age of 17 writing for artists like the Fleetwoods and Gene Pitney. In 1968, with the release of his album Randy Newman, he would make his debut as a solo artist and, in the 1980s, would make the shift to working as a film composer. 

While Randy Newman's earliest scoring work was for television series like Lost in Space and Judd for the Defense, he would get a taste for film composing in 1971 with the film Cold Turkey and return to film scoring in 1981 with American drama Ragtime. Ragtime would get him the first of many Academy Award nominations to come for Best Original Score and Best Original Song ("One More Hour"). 

Randy Newman's next big film would come with 1986's Western comedy Three Amigos. Starring Steve Martin and Lorne Michaels, Newman not only wrote three of the film's songs but he also helped to co-write the film and voice the "singing bush". 

Pixar's 1995 film Toy Story produced perhaps Randy Newman's most famous and popular song, "You've Got a Friend in Me". While the song would be nominated for that year's Academy Award for Best Original Song, Newman wouldn't win an Oscar for his Toy Story work until he produced "We Belong Together" for Toy Story 3. Other popular songs of his from the Toy Story films include "When She Loved Me" (Toy Story 2) and "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" (Toy Story 4). 

Another Academy Award-nominated Randy Newman film score is 1998's fantasy-comedy drama Pleasantville. While Randy Newman has been nominated for an Academy Award 22 times, he has only won the award twice, once for "We Belong Together" and this next film's song...

2001 would bring Randy Newman's first Oscar win for Best Original Song with Monsters, Inc.'s "If I Didn't Have You". Throughout his career, Randy Newman has written musical scores for nine Disney-Pixar films including both of the Monsters, Inc. films and this next film series... 

Randy Newman also had the chance to write the musical score for two of the four Cars films, Cars and Cars 3. His song for the first Cars film, "Our Town" would be nominated for an Academy Award in 2006. 

Randy Newman has also written for the Disney princess film The Princess and the Frog, which would earn him two more Academy Award nominations. "Almost There" and "Down in New Orleans" were both nominated for Best Original Song in 2009! 

While Randy Newman's work has been mostly contained to films the past two decades, he did pen a hit TV series theme song in 2002. Composing "It's a Jungle Out There", the Emmy Award-winning Monk theme song has become synonymous with the series! 

Other notable films Randy Newman has composed for include 'James and the Giant Peach' (1996), 'Seabiscuit' (2003), and 'Meet the Parents' (2000). At 80 years old, Randy Newman has become a legend in the film-scoring world. With songs like "You've Got a Friend in Me" and "If I Didn't Have You", Randy Newman's songs will be remembered fondly for years to come!