‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ Is the Soundtrack to Pixar’s Golden Age

Randy Newman was given pretty simple instructions: “They wanted a song that was very specifically about a special friendship between the boy and Woody, the cowboy,” he recalled in a 2019 interview with Australian radio. “They always mentioned friendship.” Newman took it from there.

It’s now been 28 years since Newman’s most popular song first came into our consciousness. It’s also been 28 years since the world first met Woody, Buzz and the rest of the crew from Toy Story — and, by extension, Pixar, the studio that asked Newman to come up with a signature song for its first film. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” was Toy Story’s emotional linchpin, becoming the theme to the animation company’s greatest franchise, the song’s meaning changing over time as sequels beget sequels. No hardcore Newman fan would call it his best tune, and yet the things we love about the man are embedded within it, even if you have to dig a little to find them. 

Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox.

It was perhaps inevitable that Newman would eventually get involved in film scoring. Although he was one of the most biting singer-songwriters of the 1970s — more Warren Zevon than James Taylor in rejecting the genre’s penchant for sensitive introspection in favor of satire, commentary and portraits of disreputable characters — he also had the ability to craft instantly catchy ditties like “Short People,” a song about the stupidity of bigotry that some fools took seriously. (Sample lyrics: “Short people got / No reason to live … Don’t want no short people / ‘Round here.”) Plus, he had three uncles who were acclaimed film composers, including Alfred Newman, who won nine Oscars and wrote the famous fanfare that played in front of 20th Century Fox movies. 

“I would go visit him when he was working, and he’d ask me what I thought,” recalled Newman about Alfred. “I mean, I might have inherited some of this, my attitude about composing, from my uncle. Because here was this guy who was the best movie composer there was. And he was asking me, when I was eight years old, ‘What do you think of this?’ And he looked worried.”

Newman’s 1970s albums, like 12 Songs, Sail Away and Good Old Boys, were landmarks of sarcasm and despair — he sang in the voice of losers, perverts, jerks and creeps — but in the 1980s, he started focusing his energies on composing, earning two Oscar nominations (one for Score, one for Original Song) for Ragtime. From there, he received further nominations for The Natural, Parenthood and Avalon, with his main theme from The Natural still used (ironically or earnestly) underneath dramatic baseball moments. As acidic as his singer-songwriter material had been, even back then he demonstrated a gift for crushingly beautiful orchestrations. (His Good Old Boys track “Louisiana 1927,” about a devastating flood, was an aching paean to the people trying to rebuild.) Newman took that talent, which seemed to come directly from his family bloodline, and applied it to movie scores, which were lovely but eschewed the thorniness of his previous work.

Meanwhile, right around the time that Newman was getting serious about film work, a company called Pixar was being formed. In 1979, George Lucas, fresh off the success of Star Wars, wanted to remain on the cutting edge of computer technology, hiring (among others) Ed Catmull, who eventually co-founded Pixar. At that time, this team was known as the Graphics Group, later joined by an animator named John Lasseter, who helped them create animated short films done on the computer. In 1986, Steve Jobs bought the company, calling it Pixar. (The name originated with Pixar’s other co-founder, Alvy Ray Smith, who made it up, enjoying the fact that it sounded like a fake Spanish verb that meant “to make pictures.”) That same year, Luxo Jr., starring the lamp we see as part of the opening logo on every Pixar film, came out, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short. Suddenly, three-dimensional computer animation was a reality. The industry was about to change.

When the Pixar brain trust, led by Lasseter, started developing Toy Story in the early 1990s, the initial thought was to base the film on the studio’s Oscar-winning 1988 short Tin Toy. But as time went on, that idea was scrapped, eventually leading to the notion of a cowboy toy named Woody, who’s beloved by Andy, and the new toy who arrives, named Buzz Lightyear, who doesn’t realize he’s a toy. The story went through myriad changes — everyone from Lasseter to Joss Whedon worked on the script — before Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were hired in 1993 to voice the lead roles. Toy Story would be released through Disney — this was long before Disney acquired Pixar — but Lasseter and his team were against making a traditional animated musical. However, they did want a score and some songs. So they reached out to Newman.

“(The filmmakers) wanted an orchestra for the score of Toy Story, and that’s why they hired me,” Newman once said of how he got the gig. “They liked the arrangements I had done.” 

There were two other songs with lyrics that Newman wrote for the film, “Strange Things” (about Woody’s shock at how much Buzz’s arrival changes his relationship with Andy) and “I Will Go Sailing No More” (about Buzz’s acceptance that he’s not really a space ranger). But the song that had the most impact was “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” which plays over the opening credits as Andy is having the best time playing with Woody, his favorite toy — until Buzz shows up, that is. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” articulated the bond between toy and boy:

You’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got a friend in me 
When the road looks rough ahead 
And you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed 
You just remember what your old pal said 
Boy, you’ve got a friend in me 
Yeah, you’ve got a friend in me

Unlike the typical animated musical, where the on-screen characters sing their thoughts out loud, Newman’s Toy Story songs were sung by Newman, the musician expressing the characters’ inner thoughts. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” clearly seems to be from Woody’s perspective, offering a comforting message to his human buddy: I’ll always be here, and I’ll always have your back.

The tune’s gentle sweetness might have seemed out-of-character for an artist who trafficked in irony. But even during his venomous singer-songwriter years, Newman occasionally revealed a softer side: His 1960s song “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear,” later included on 1972’s Sail Away, was a straightforward piano tune about a performer and his cuddly, furry friend. But despite its breezy melody and warm tone, “Simon Smith” may be thornier than it appears: In his biography Randy Newman’s American Dreams, writer Kevin Courrier suggests the bear is actually a disguise that Simon Smith dons to entertain crowds. Courrier also points out that Newman (who’s Jewish) has hinted that the dancing bear is meant to be a gentile, helping the Jewish Simon Smith assimilate among bigoted audiences. For such a pretty song, “Simon Smith” may very well be about being an outsider living in a world of anti-Semitism. 

Whether or not that’s true, Newman has said of “Simon Smith,” “It’s the first song where I wasn’t trying to be Carole King. It was the first song I wrote that sounds like me.” He wasn’t dissing King — he adores her songwriting — but “Simon Smith” was one of his earliest compositions, and it taught him a valuable lesson: He didn’t have to sing about himself. “(I thought,) ‘Why shouldn’t songwriters have the latitude that a short-story writer, like John Updike, has?’” Newman said. “When he writes a short story or a novel, it doesn’t have to be he who is the protagonist.” Also, it made him realize that a song that seemed benign could hide a darker meaning — even if it seemed to be about best buds.

When Toy Story came out around Thanksgiving in 1995, it was a sensation. Audiences had never seen an animated movie that looked like this — plus, it was funny, action-packed and moving, establishing Pixar as a studio that wasn’t making “just” kids’ movies. Watch Toy Story now and the computer animation is fairly rudimentary — the technology has rapidly improved since — but otherwise the movie remains wondrous. And providing an emotional foundation to the clever script were Newman’s songs. For anyone who had loved cutting satires like “Political Science” or “Rednecks,” a track like “Strange Things” felt rather tame. But to borrow a phrase that wasn’t around at the time, Newman understood the assignment.

“My other music, god knows who some of it’s for!” he once said, laughing. “But it’s not for children in any sense, almost never. And this stuff has to be at least in part for children. It can’t disqualify anybody. It’s good for me to have assignments like that, I can maybe get a little arcane. (The Pixar songs are) not exactly middle of the road, I can’t quite get there, but it’s as close to it as I’ll ever get.”

So much of Toy Story was dazzlingly hip and new, but there were also familiar comforts. Hanks and Allen’s voices. The presence of classic toys like Mr. Potato Head (performed by none other than Don Rickles). And also there were Newman’s songs, his singing style conversational and approachable, his tunes sprightly and welcoming. He was nominated for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score and Best Original Song (for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”) — his seventh and eighth Oscar nominations. (He lost both to Pocahontas, a very traditional Disney animated musical.) 

Soon, Pixar was the gold standard, not just for animation but for Hollywood in general. Crafting original stories set in imaginative worlds — inside an ant colony, around a factory where monsters magically enter kids’ bedrooms to scare them, a desert community of talking cars — the studio seemed to be more inventive and having more fun than anyone else in the business. And the movies were often scored by Newman, who became a sort of in-house composer. Newman finally won his first Oscar for “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc., a pseudo-“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” that capitalized on his mastery of dixieland music from his childhood growing up in New Orleans. His easy-going tunes were the films’ heartbeat.   

But as Pixar evolved, so did its approach. Outside of the Toy Story sequels, the studio mostly moved away from original songs inside its films, and later projects like Finding Nemo and Wall-E tapped Newman’s nephew Thomas to score them. (Michael Giacchino would also become a major Pixar composer, winning an Oscar for his score to Up.) Randy Newman came back to score the sequels for Toy Story and Cars — and the prequel to Monsters, Inc. — and he continued to do memorable work. “When She Loved Me,” sung by Sarah McLachlan from Toy Story 2, about Joan Cusack’s Jessie reminiscing about the little girl who used to adore her, was a killer ballad. 

But “When She Loved Me” also underlined something profound and poignant about the Toy Story franchise, which was its acknowledgement that time marches on, kids grow up, and relationships change. Of course, that recognition was there from the beginning. In the original Toy Story, Woody has to navigate a strange new reality in which he’s no longer Andy’s favorite — the more high-tech Buzz is far cooler than some old-fashioned cowboy. By the end of that movie, the two rivals become friends, but it set in motion a string of sequels in which a fear of separation — a fear of things ending — is never far from the characters’ minds. Maybe it’s Andy going away to college. Maybe it’s the possibility of the gang being broken up. Sometimes the stakes are even graver: In Toy Story 3, the toys face the very real possibility of dying. That worry about something beautiful ending is nestled inside “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” if you just pay attention to the full lyrics: 

You’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got a friend in me 
When the road looks rough ahead 
And you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed 
You just remember what your old pal said 
Boy, you’ve got a friend in me 
Yeah, you’ve got a friend in me  

You’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got troubles, and I’ve got ‘em, too 
There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you 
We stick together and we see it through 
‘Cause you’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got a friend in me  

Some other folks might be a little bit smarter than I am 
Bigger and stronger too, maybe 
But none of them will ever love you the way I do 
It’s me and you, boy  

And as the years go by 
Our friendship will never die 
You’re gonna see, it’s our destiny 
You’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got a friend in me 
You’ve got a friend in me

On that Australian radio interview, Newman was asked why “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” has such an impact on listeners. After all, it’s his only song to be certified double-platinum, and it remains his most popular on Spotify. Newman gave the question some thought. “It’s a bit of a universal subject — a kid, a toy,” he replied, “but it implies a little bit that the kid is a bit of a lonely kid, perhaps, that he would emphasize the importance of the toy so much. … Kids, whatever age, remember that they had a toy like Woody was to Andy.” 

That might be true — many of us had a toy or stuffed animal that we clung to as children — but the lyrics seem to be coming from Woody’s perspective. A toy offers us unquestioning devotion, but the toy is also at our mercy: If we decide we’re tired of the toy, into the closet it goes, banished forever. The toy has no power — it can only love us and hope we love it back. No wonder there’s an insecurity that emerges in the song as the narrator admits, “Some other folks might be a little bit smarter than I am / Bigger and stronger too, maybe / But none of them will ever love you the way I do / It’s me and you, boy.” 

Woody worries he could be replaced — perhaps by a space ranger? — so he insists no other toy could ever be as faithful as he is. It’s a song about friendship, but it’s also a song about codependency and need. “You’ve got a friend in me” starts to sound less like a pledge and more like a guilt trip or a desperate attempt to hold onto something.

To be sure, I’m very much reading in between the lines of a song that most see as just a happy little tune. But Newman has always had a knack for giving even the simplest sentiments an edge. The soaring “Sail Away” is actually a cynical pitch to Black Africans who are being shipped to America during slavery. His nostalgic “My Country,” off 1999’s Bad Love, paints a portrait of an older man who prefers TV to his family. The seemingly patriotic ballad “Follow the Flag,” from 1988’s Land of Dreams, is so sincere about its narrator’s love of flag and country that most don’t even notice it’s really a chilling examination of blind nationalism. The more heartfelt Newman is, the more you have to question what he’s singing about. 

Not that he’s lying in “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” The song really is about love and friendship, just what Pixar asked for. But remember that long ago when Newman wrote a song about a performer and a dancing bear, he claimed he was finally writing something that sounded like him — even though it wasn’t directly about him. He writes in disguises, hiding inside characters to express the alienation, anger, ugliness, insecurity and longing that resides within all of us. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” is about Woody and Andy, but it’s also about the need to connect with another person — and the fear that we aren’t enough, and that the other person will realize that. Although Newman never mentions it in the song, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” understands that friendships, like most everything else, don’t last. 

The song became the Toy Story franchise’s thesis statement, and each new movie tested its validity. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” was a promise that things would never change, but things are always changing in that franchise. Andy moves away. Woody eventually decides to stay with Bo Peep and say goodbye to the rest of the toys. Over time, the song started to feel different — it evolved into a rumination on the ghosts of friendships past. In the Toy Story movies, like in real life, friendships evolve, but those bonds remain, even if the circumstances shift. 

About 15 years ago, Newman was lamenting his inability to come up with straightforward love songs. “It’s such an odd, convoluted process when I write a love song,” he said, noting that one of his all-time best, “I Miss You,” was written for his ex-wife after marrying his current wife. (“I want to thank you for the good years / And apologize for the rough ones / You must be laughing yourself sick / Up there in Idaho / But I wanted to write you one / Before I quit / And this one’s it.”) Looking back on his career, he observed, “(I’ve written) love songs, but not straight love song ideas. You know, if I had written just love songs, well, I don’t know if I would have been an artist. But I think I would have made more money.”

Not to worry: Between “I Love L.A.” being played at Southern California sporting events and his Natural theme popping up during baseball broadcasts, I’m sure the man, now 79, is living comfortably. (Although I hope he continues to feel better after a recent surgery.) His legacy will always be tied, in part, to his extensive Pixar work. (He won a second Oscar for his song “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3.) 

But like everything else, Pixar has changed over time, too. The studio has expanded and continued to stay busy — its newest picture, Elemental, is the company’s 27th feature — and the creative team has expanded beyond its original storytellers, becoming more diverse and tackling different topics. (Plus, Pixar has had to reckon with darker aspects of its past: The less said about Lasseter, the better.) Not surprisingly, there have been growing pains and also the challenge of maintaining such a high standard creatively. More often than not, Pixar hasn’t proved equal to the task, its recent films a very mixed bag. Consequently, Newman will forever be associated with Pixar’s golden age, that period when it really felt like it was reinventing what animated blockbusters could be. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” is now the soundtrack to that bygone era.

“I’m very proud of it,” Newman said of the song in 2019. “I don’t know whether intrinsically it’s one of my best songs, but it is certainly the most well-known, I would say. And it still has a great deal of meaning. I’ve done it in concert, and a number of kids there who were Andy’s age (at the time the film was released) are really moved by it, genuinely so. Maybe not because of the song, but because of the experience of Toy Story.”

Why not both?