Angela George · CC BY-SA 3.0

Born in Los Angeles into an extended family of Hollywood film composers, Randy Newman built a songwriting career on wry, unreliable narrators — songs like "Short People" and "Sail Away" let a fictional voice say things Newman himself did not believe, a device that unsettled listeners as often as it charmed them. Since the 1990s he has scored Pixar's biggest films, writing "You've Got a Friend in Me" for Toy Story. His work has won two Academy Awards from 22 nominations, three Emmys, and seven Grammys, spanning both pointed satire and some of the most recognizable children's-film music of his era.