Short People composer Randy Newman says he doesn't mean to offend people with his songs, it just turns out that way sometimes.

"I don't look to p-- people off," says Newman, 54, in town recently to promote his new album, Bad Love, which ends with a song titled, I Want Everyone To Like Me.

"I don't like controversy in the slightest. But I can't help the way I write and it's too important to me to worry about it. But I'd much rather have written I Love You Just The Way You Are except at the end I probably would have said, 'You stupid bitch,' and ruined it from being a hit."

Still, it seems Newman can't help but cause a ruckus even when he isn't doing anything remotely offensive. He and I, along with the rest of his entourage, are tossed from a Toronto restaurant (the Movenpick at Front and John Sts.) before the interview even begins. Seems the manager is nervous about any disruption as the lunch hour approaches.

"I guess that guy was really getting into that old German music and thought he was a Nazi," jokes Newman.

And I guess that after working with such notoriously difficult divas as Peggy Lee and Barbra Streisand over the years, power trippers aren't such a big deal to the food service industry .

"I worked with Streisand, she just worked hard and that's all I saw," says Newman. "And Peggy Lee was the same. I've heard bad things about 'em but I didn't see it."

After carving out an early career as a songwriter for hire -- Three Dog Night had a No. 1 hit with his song Mama Told Me Not To Come -- Newman established a cult following as a satirical recording artist with a penchant for writing about characters on the fringe.

In more recent years, Newman has moved into the mainstream by following in the footsteps of his uncles, legendary film composers Alfred and Lionel Newman.

Newman was up for three trophies at the Oscars this year for his music in Pleasantville, A Bug's Life and Babe: Pig In the City, but went home empty-handed.

He's about to start working on Toy Story II this month and says the difference between writing a pop song and making movie music is self-censorship.

"There's limits to what I do," he says. "I mean the most commercial stuff I do is when I'm forced into having to write for an audience that wouldn't necessarily like what I do. It puts me more in the mainstream than my predilection would. Writing on my own is, like, I don't have anyone to answer to but myself. But writing for them, I have a responsibility to not say s---."

Speaking of which, Bad Love, produced by Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, does contain some vulgarities and songs which may offend.

The one that's most likely to get Newman in hot water is I Miss You, written about his first wife, who he left for a much younger woman -- his second wife of eight years.

"It's also sort of about writing in that you are willing, because you get a good song, to sacrifice the feelings of everyone you know," explains Newman.

"I like the idea, in a perverse way, of writing a love song to a first wife, who you don't even see or have to deal with, and then you have to deal with the second wife every day about that."

Bad Love is Newman's first studio album since 1988's Land Of Dreams. In between there was his 1995 all-star recording Randy Newman's Faust followed by last year's four-CD retrospective Guilty: 30 Years Of Randy Newman.

"I hope never to go very long again," says Newman, who is planning a 14-date tour in the fall with a possible Toronto show. "Unless I think I'm really not as good and then I'll quit, which is possible."