12 Songs is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Randy Newman, released in April 1970 by Reprise Records. It features a swampy style of roots music with introspective, satirical songwriting. "Have You Seen My Baby?", the album's only single, was released in May.
When 12 Songs was first released, it was well received and has since garnered retrospective acclaim from critics such as Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone, both of whom cite it as one of the best albums of all time.
Music and lyrics
According to Q, 12 Songs demonstrated Newman's eccentric mix of traditional pop song structures and his sardonic, satirical humor. AllMusic's Mark Deming said although his sense of humor seemed more caustic than on his self-titled debut album, Newman's "most mordant character studies" on 12 Songs "boast a recognizable humanity, which often make his subjects both pitiable and all the more loathsome." In the opinion of Robert Christgau, American songwriting in general is often "banal, prolix, and virtually solipsistic when it wants to be honest, merely banal when it doesn't", but Newman's truisms on the album are "always concise, never confessional", and unique:
As with all of Newman's early albums, several of its songs had been previously recorded by other artists. In this case, "Mama Told Me Not to Come" had originally been recorded in 1967 by Eric Burdon, and that same year the Beau Brummels released their version of "My Old Kentucky Home". Three other songs originally appeared in versions by other artists just a few months prior to the LP release of 12 Songs: "Yellow Man" by Harry Nilsson on his February 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman; "Have You Seen My Baby" by Fats Domino (as a 1969 single); and "Let's Burn Down the Cornfield" by Lou Rawls (the B-side to his 1970 R&B hit "You've Made Me So Very Happy").