Song of the Day 7/2: Randy Newman, “Jolly Coppers on Parade”

Critics were lukewarm toward Randy Newman’s “Little Criminals” LP when it came out in 1977, but thanks to the surprise success of his controversial hit “Short People,” it became his best-selling album. This song, its title taken from a Swedish mystery novel, got little notice then or since, probably because most people didn’t and don’t know what to make of it.

Newman himself once said, who knows how seriously, that it “isn’t an absolutely anti-police song. Maybe it’s even a fascist song. I didn’t notice at the time.” The lyrics certainly sound that way for two verses as he rhapsodizes about the police looking “like angels come down from paradise.” It seems related to “Sail Away,” where the irony lies in the prettification of evil.

“Jolly Coppers” is a little deeper, though. Newman introduces the twist in the bridge — the narrator is a young boy who, unlike us, can see unalloyed beauty in smiling police putting on a show. That innocence, and our knowledge that it someday will be shattered, are driven home with one of Newman’s most heartbreakingly lovely melodies. His vocals, lacking their usual rough edge, are delivered without discernible irony, and the music by members of the Wrecking Crew — that’s Waddy Wachtel providing the guitar fills between Newman’s layers of orchestration — is buffed to a high gloss.

It’s a beautiful song that on its surface sounds like a love letter to the police department. We know it’s not, but we know that only because of external cues — nothing in the song indicates it’s anything else. Which is why a lot of people still don’t know what to make of it.