No matter how funny a joke might be, there are bound to be some people who just don’t get it. That’s what Randy Newman learned when he released the song that would end up being his biggest hit…even if he got death threats over the lyrics.
Released as a single from Newman’s 1977 album Little Criminals, “Short People” was written as a hilariously satirical statement against prejudice in general. After declaring “short people got no reason to live,” Newman delivers a laundry list of nonsensical complaints:
They got little hands
And little eyes
And they walk around
Tellin’ great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little feet
The song is obviously meant to be a joke, but plenty of people didn’t take it that way. Even though “Short People” went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 in 1978, it caused such an uproar that Newman received a series of threats against his life, according to American Songwriter.
As Newman told Rolling Stone in 2017, he was “surprised by the reaction. Because it was a hit, the song reached people who aren’t looking for irony. For them, the words mean exactly what they say. I can imagine being a short kid in junior high school. I thought about it before I let the record get out. But I thought, ‘What the hell?’ I know what I meant — the guy in that song is crazy. He was not to be believed.”
In an interview withPerforming Songwriter, Newman marveled at the fact that “anyone could believe that anyone was as crazy as that character.”
Photo by Shepard Sherbell on Getty Images
“To have that kind of animus against short people, and then to sing it and put it all in song and have a philosophy on it,” he continued. “And yet, there were people who took a genuine beating. I mean, who wants to be bothered, you know, ‘here’s your song again, honey, ha, ha, ha.'”
“I almost regret nothing that I’ve written, and I don’t regret that because I like it,” Newman added. “But you could make a case for that one. Of course I didn’t mean it, but it doesn’t do any good if someone is going into an office every day and gets ribbed about being short, or ‘Mom, I don’t want to go to school today…this damn song’ you know. And when they stopped playing it — they got complaints at one station — it just jumped on everywhere else and went to number one really fast and then was gone. It was the biggest single that I have had. And it was probably my biggest album in the U.S.”
Indeed, not only did “Short People” — which Record World called “one of the funniest [singles] of any year” — get banned on some radio stations, but a politician in Maryland named Isaiah Dion even tried to get legislation passed that would have made it illegal to play the song on the radio. (This never happened, according to The Baltimore Sun.)
Thankfully, Newman’s fans had, and have, a sense of humor.
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