Dark Matter is the fifteenth studio album of original material and first of such in nine years by Randy Newman, released on August 4, 2017, by Nonesuch Records. NPR.org released an advance stream of the album on July 27, 2017.[7] Music critic Robert Christgau ranked it as the sixth-best album of the 2010s.[8]
The album's fifth track, "Sonny Boy," is notable for being a song delivered from the perspective of American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson (birth name John Lee Curtis Williamson). "Sonny Boy" is about the original Sonny Boy Williamson learning of bluesman Rice Miller having assumed his name and depicts Williamson confronting Miller about it (in fact, the two bluesmen never met). The song imagines the original Sonny Boy Williamson in heaven resenting Miller for having achieved more fame and fortune after having stolen his name.[9][10]
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