In 1974, Randy Newman opened his album “Good Old Boys” with “Rednecks,” a song about American racism so honest and shocking that half a century later, it still feels hot to the touch. A bluesy country-rock lope with perversely creamy backing vocals by the Eagles, “Rednecks” reveals not only the hate in one man’s heart but also the means by which prejudice becomes part of a nation’s core. It’s just one of the many songs Newman has written that probe “the shortcomings of the American character,” as music critic Robert Hilburn puts it.

Hilburn, The Los Angeles Times’ pop music critic from 1970 to 2005, takes up Newman’s life and work in his book, “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman.” Written with the participation of the artist — Newman sat for hours of interviews and connected Hilburn with friends, relatives and collaborators — the bio tracks Newman’s winding path from teenage pop tunesmith to ’70s cult-fave singer-songwriter to Oscar-winning film-music maestro. (Scoring movies is a family business for the native Angeleno, whose uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil were big during the Golden Age of Hollywood.)

Yet Hilburn, who has also written books about Paul Simon and Johnny Cash, builds “A Few Words” around his belief in the sociopolitical importance of songs as sharp, as perceptive and often as darkly hilarious as “Sail Away,” “Baltimore,” “Louisiana 1927” and “It’s Money That I Love;” he also digs into the trap-door depths of Newman’s two famous quasi-novelty hits: “Short People,” which somehow reached No. 2 in 1978, and the deathless “I Love L.A.,” which still marks home-game wins by the Lakers and the Dodgers. (To judge by streams, Newman’s biggest actual hit is “You’ve Got a Friend In Me,” from the Pixar movie “Toy Story,” which has been played more than 327 million times on Spotify.)

This interview with Newman has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: You learn anything from Hilburn’s book?

A: A few things. Mainly, what was going on in the record company. Nobody told me much. After the first question I asked about sales, I never asked another one.

Q: You’d heard enough bad news.

A: I mean, I really care about numbers — love baseball statistics and the populations of different towns. So I was interested. My problem was that I decided to follow another artist starting out the same time I was (to compare sales numbers against). I picked James Taylor, who I’d never heard of, and within a few weeks, he began to pull away from me. Next time I did it, I ended up looking at Christopher Cross, who sold like 10 million records on his first try.

Q: What made you agree to cooperate with Hilburn?

A: When I met him, he was very nice. He did Paul and Johnny Cash, and I was honored to be considered somewhat in the same ballpark. God, that’s pathetic. But, you know, Paul’s real fussy — I’m not as strict as he is. So I figured if he allowed it, what the hell?

Q: Would you say you use beautiful melodies to soften an acerbic lyric or use acerbic lyrics to toughen up a beautiful melody?

A: Neither. If it doesn’t fit, I don’t do it. I don’t know whether the tunes and stuff made things more palatable, but none of it strikes me as being wrong, unless I made a mistake, which God knows I did.

Q: Fair to say you have a self-destructive streak? You don’t title a pop song “Sigmund Freud’s Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America” without being a little masochistic.

A: I knew very soon that certain stuff wasn’t gonna appeal to everybody. But I didn’t care if I thought it was all right. That song is maybe a bit of a stretch. I thought it was funny. I liked them both being in the same town, like in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties,” with all the historical figures. (E.L.) Doctorow did it in “Ragtime” too.

Q: What’s a song of yours that you’re particularly proud of?

A: I did some stuff on the last three albums that felt like an advance, in some ways: the song about the mother and the father (“Lost Without You”) and the thing about the Kennedys (“Brothers”). If I may toot my own horn here, I don’t think I’ve slipped much. I know the second album got great reviews, but it’s not as good as the last three were.

Q: All kinds of singers have done your songs: “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” alone has been sung by Barbra Streisand, Dusty Springfield, Joe Cocker and Françoise Hardy. What does your distinctive voice bring to the material?

A: I think over the years I became a pretty good actor, particularly on a song like “The Great Debate.” And anytime I get a chance to break into a gospel-style thing, I’ll do it.

Q: You wrote a rap song, “Masterman and Baby J,” for 1988’s “Land of Dreams” album. Would you do that now?

A: Yeah, because I like a lot of the rap stuff since then: Eminem, the Notorious B.I.G., a number of people. It seems as if they have a real wide latitude to say stuff. I take those liberties anyway. But I’d give it a try.

Q: Did you solicit advice from any established rappers in 1988?

A: As I recall, I did. I knew Ice-T a little bit and asked him how I sounded. I can’t remember what he said.

Q: The rapping’s not bad.

A: I thought it was all right. I mean, I also thought it was liable to embarrass me in a week.

Q: In 2017, you told Marc Maron on his podcast that you’d advise younger musicians to hold onto their publishing. You sold yours to Litmus Music. What changed your mind?

A: What changed my mind is that I know whose songs they are. I would hope that “Think It’s Gonna Rain” doesn’t get used in a beer commercial. But I can just look the other way to some degree. I imagine that bothers fans who buy the Neil Young talk about commercials. But, you know, I can’t play to 80,000 people, and Neil can. He doesn’t have to sell anything. I’ve thought a lot about money, even though I never wrote like I thought about it, and I’ve written about it a number of times, mainly from the slant that it’s too important in the world. In the ’60s, people acted like money wasn’t important, which was nice. But you get a little older, and that doesn’t quite obtain.

Q: Other important songwriters have sold the rights to their songs recently: Dylan, Simon, Bruce Springsteen. Did that influence your thinking?

A: “Well, if he’s doing it, I’ll do it too”? I never thought that exactly. But I did start hearing music in commercials. You could tell that someone had sold something.

Q: Did you try to build certain limitations into your deal regarding what could be done with your songs?

A: I talked to someone about it. God knows whether it’ll have any real effect. I really do hope they wouldn’t use “Think It’s Gonna Rain,” because it’s kind of important to some people. When they used to ask for “You’ve Got a Friend” in commercials, I would say to Disney, “Don’t do it,” and they’d often abide by that. Not always — sometimes they used it themselves. But I didn’t want to do it because kids sing along with it, you know? It’s nice to do it for a crowd that way. I didn’t want them to be disabused of that.