9e: Randy Newman at Macworld

As a good little Apple fanboy, I followed Steve Jobs keynote speech at Macworld on Tuesday closely, via live bloggers. But at the end, when Randy Newman came out to perform the customary after-speech musical bit, I thought, WTF? Randy Newman? Oh, I get it, it's because of his soundtrack work for Pixar (e.g., Toy Story's "You've Got A Friend In Me").

And maybe that is why. But then I read Daring Fireball's keynote recap, which made me watch the video.

Randy Newman’s keynote-capping scathing anti-Bush administration song was quite a thing. I loved it, and it seemed like everyone around me in the press section was enjoying it thoroughly. But, quite obviously, for humorless Bush supporters, it must have been infuriating. The song is chock full of “I can’t believe he just said that” lines.

It’s certainly hard to imagine any other major corporation in the U.S. that would invite Randy Newman on stage to perform a song like that.

It's not quite as radical as I first thought from that description, but he's definitely right. For the closing of the celebrity CEO's very high-profile speech at a totally corporate event, it is pretty ballsy.