Randy Newman might seem like an odd fit for a rock fan site, but this Los Angeles-born singer-songwriter has always had one foot planted firmly in the rock world, even if his other foot was deep in Tin Pan Alley and New Orleans R&B. Emerging in the late 1960s, Newman built a reputation as one of rock's sharpest satirists, a guy who could write a gorgeous melody and then fill it with a narrator you'd genuinely want to punch. His early albums like 12 Songs and Sail Away are stone-cold classics, dripping with dark irony and Southern gothic atmosphere that influenced everyone from Elvis Costello to Tom Waits.