Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Song

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Original Song

The nominees are:

“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

“This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once

“Naatu Naatu” from RRR

“Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman

“Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick

You don’t need to hear me go on about this category again. Go back and read every previous installment of this series over the years if you want to know my complaints. At this point, it’s a plus if the Music Branch of the Academy doesn’t actively embarrass itself with its nominees. With one glaring, annual exception, this list accomplishes at least that.

“Naatu Naatu” – I can’t guarantee M.M. Keeravani’s and Chandrabose’s absolute banger of a pop song is going to win the Oscar, but I can guarantee that the three minutes it takes to perform will be the best three minutes of the ceremony. This ear worm is impossible not to move to, and it’s likely you have seen videos on social media of people dancing in the aisles to this song at packed screenings of the film. Get Hugh Jackman up on stage to perform this song with the film’s stars and open the show that way – boom, instant hit.

A critical darling, there was buzz around RRR for nominations up to and including Best Picture. None of that materialized, but “Naatu Naatu” is undeniable, and as the film’s only nomination, there’s a good chance fans of this wild ride will take the opportunity to reward it in the only way they can. For what it’s worth, it’s also the only song in the lineup that fits what I believe to be the spirit of the award, in that its performance is integral to the plot of the film. But, the Academy has never really cared about that.

“Lift Me Up” – What a good break for the producers of the Academy Awards. Hot off a much talked-about halftime performance at the Super Bowl, Rihanna has confirmed she will perform her closing credits song from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at the Oscars. This, combined with the next song we’re going to talk about, is exactly what the Academy hopes for in this category: buzzy stars they can sell to advertisers and young people. Last year, they got Billie Eilish and Beyoncé. As replacements, they could do a lot worse than Rihanna and Lady Gaga (next one down). 

While I’m not a fan of closing credits songs in this category, “Lift Me Up” feels more necessary than most, coming as it does on the heels of a powerfully emotional entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. By the end of Ryan Coogler’s latest Black Panther movie, we are thrilled by what we have seen but mourning for our lost star, Chadwick Boseman. Rihanna’s song, penned with Coogler, composer Ludwig Göransson, and Tems, hits all the right notes, sending the audience out on a high.

“Hold My Hand” – Lady Gaga is quickly becoming a fixture at this ceremony. A three-time Song nominee and one-time winner already, Gaga has also performed as part of past tribute packages and just last year helped Liza Minnelli present the Best Picture Oscar to CODA. Due to Minnelli’s obviously declining health, the moment teetered on the brink of disaster, but Gaga’s grace and compassion under immense pressure saved the day and is now remembered as one of the more heartwarming moments in recent Oscars history.

As for “Hold My Hand,” it is exactly the kind of song you would imagine would accompany a Top Gun sequel in the year 2022. It is listenable, forgettable, and entirely too on the nose. Which is to say, it’s not that far removed from “Take My Breath Away,” the pop anthem from the original Top Gun that won this category in 1986. At the very least, the Academy will get its Gaga ratings bump once again.

“This Is a Life” – Exactly as oppressively whimsical and all over the map as the film in which it appears, this track from Everything Everywhere All at Once is notable mostly for the composers – Son Lux, Mitski, and David Byrne. Byrne is a previous Oscar winner for Best Original Score for The Last Emperor in 1987. Now, 35 years later, if this is what it takes for the man behind the Talking Heads to get another statue, so be it.

“Applause” – This is the Diane Warren song this year. Here is, word for word, exactly what I wrote about her nomination last year:

At a certain point, one really has to feel for the Music Branch – not me, I don’t have any sympathy for a branch that so consistently gets this category wrong. But, members really, really love Diane Warren, and they seem positively desperate to get her an Oscar. This is the fifth consecutive year in which Warren has received a nomination and seventh out of the previous eight. She has 12 total nominations and no wins. She probably could have won for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon or “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from Mannequin, but she didn’t. So, here we are in an endless cycle of nominating not very good work every year just to try to get her over that hill.

This brings us to “Somehow You Do,” which not only is not very good, but it is actually quite bad. More than that, it is part of a pretty bad movie. Ironically, the song’s lack of subtlety is kind of a perfect fit for the generically somber addiction drama that is Four Good Days. Once again, Warren will be a bridesmaid, and even if I can muster no sympathy for the Music Branch, I do feel a little bad for Warren having to get dressed up every damn year just to lose an award.

Let me update the numbers for you: This is six consecutive years, eight out of nine, and 13 total nominations with no competitive wins. She does have an Oscar now, as this very year she was the recipient of an honorary award. That did not satisfy her peers, who are demanding she be voted queen for a day at the big show. It ain’t gonna happen. I haven’t watched Tell It Like a Woman. I probably won’t. But, I listened to this song, and once again, it was quite bad. There’s probably nothing to be done about this situation, so perhaps the Academy would be best off just reserving a couple seats for Warren every year.

The final analysis

Anything could win, except the Warren song. There is not really a clear frontrunner. There is no Bond song nominated this year for the Academy to vote blindly for. No Pixar or Disney movie with a catchy pop hit like “Remember Me” (Coco) or “Let It Go” (Frozen). No musical with a single standout tune like “City of Stars” (La La Land) or “Shallow” (A Star Is Born). Just a bunch of really famous people writing popular songs for big hit movies (and Diane Warren).

I am going to place my chips on “Naatu Naatu” because that is what’s most fun to do and because I think the love for RRR is real and needs somewhere to go. But if Rihanna ends up holding an Oscar – which would be a cool but strange win for Coogler, as well – or Lady Gaga wins another, I won’t be the least bit surprised. If the Best Picture heat for Everything Everywhere All at Once carries the day, that wouldn’t be so out of the ordinary either. For now, let’s bet with our dancing shoes on.

Will win: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR

Should win: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR

Should have been here: “Ciao Papa” from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

A note about my favorite snub: This is actually the animated musical that deserved recognition in this category, but because it is not from Disney or Pixar, it did not get the same attention. Now, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a Netflix production, so no one is crying over lack of promotion, and it will likely win Best Animated Feature, but this jaunty little number that plays a couple of times in the film to great effect deserved to be here.

Next time: Animated Feature

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Song

Sam Smith's opening titles theme for Spectre, "Writing's on the Wall," is nominated for Best Original Song.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Original Song

The nominees are:

“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey

“Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground

“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction

“Writing’s on the Wall” from Spectre

“Simple Song #3” from Youth

Almost every year, this category is just a joke. Remember yesterday when I wrote about how nice it is that the makeup artists are willing to look outside the prestige world and nominate the best work. Well, the music branch takes that lovely idea, distorts it, and coughs up a nominations list that is frankly embarrassing. Maybe this is easy to miss since the Academy has gotten lucky the last few years with zeitgeist-capturing winners such as “Let It Go” from Frozen, “Skyfall” from Skyfall, and “Glory” from Selma. It is arguable whether any of those is a deserving winner, but I promise no song nominated this year is as enjoyable to listen to as any of those.

I have thought about this category for a few days now and had been considering softening my stance. As I wrote at the end of last month, I think it is great these nominations have shined a light on two important, well-made documentaries that deserve a much wider audience. Associating itself with worthy causes is about the best thing this category has done in the last couple decades, but then I remember that forever, people will be able to say, “The Oscar-nominated box-office smash Fifty Shades of Grey …,” and I get sad all over again.

The thing is I do not think the music branch or the Academy as a whole knows what it wants out of this category. As it seems now, the winners tend to be the most enjoyable or popular songs that happened to have been written for a movie, regardless of their impact on, place in, or importance to the film. Well, there is an awards show already that recognizes the best context-free song: the Grammys. The show is this weekend.

Of these five nominees, only one has any meaning to the plot of its film, and the best thing I can say about that song is that it is interminable. The other four nominees are, by turns, pointless, indelicate, ill conceived, or actively annoying. I do not ask that every year every song rise to the level of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Hustle and Flow, “Falling Slowly” from Once, or “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart – songs I believe establish a gold standard for recent winners – but rarely have things felt this dire.

“Writing’s on the Wall from Spectre – The last movie I saw in the great Ziegfeld Theatre before it was recently shut down was Spectre. It was a lovely experience, seeing a throwback spy thriller in that wonderful movie house. Fittingly, Spectre felt like it had more in common with the old James Bond movies of the Sean Connery or Roger Moore era than with the new, self-consciously gritty entries in the series. Still, every Bond movie feels like a Bond movie, and it starts right at the beginning with a big action sequence followed by the opening titles set to the new theme song.

Adele and Paul Epworth’s “Skyfall” is a tough act to follow, to be sure, but it is hard to overstate how aggressively bad Sam Smith and James Napier’s “Writing’s on the Wall” is. It barely works as a listenable song, let alone a coherent commentary on the themes or even the plot of Spectre. One of the Ziegfeld’s best qualities was its amazing sound system, and the longer “Writing’s on the Wall” played through those awesome speakers, the angrier I got. It would have been a good time to grab a snack.

It is beyond baffling to me that this song could be nominated. Hell, it won the Golden Globe, though the Hollywood Foreign Press, in keeping with its celebrity-first, quality-second history, has nominated and awarded some genuinely terrible songs over the years just based on star power. If this song wins the Oscar, which it very well could, it would be for the same reasons. Smith has the name recognition, and Spectre blew the rest of these nominees out of the water in terms of box office.

“Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground – Probably the only nominee that could compete in terms of star power is this composition from Diane Warren and Lady Gaga. I will not sit here and argue that the song does not have certain qualities or that its subject matter is not important, but I will admit to being confused by its message within the context of the film.

Kirby Dick’s campus sexual assault documentary is a powerful look at how universities are set up to protect rapists and ignore victims, a sobering, infuriating investigation into a broken and backward system, and a radical call to action that focuses on survivors and their quest for justice. The lyrics to the song assert, “’Til it happens to you/you won’t know how it feels/’til it happens to you/it won’t be real,” which is true enough but also quite disempowering for those of us not personally touched by sexual assault.

Both the film and the song are about survivors, as they should be, but while the film is also about how we all should be angry and doing something about this problem, the song seems to run counter to that point. The song essentially says if we have not experienced this trauma, we should shut the hell up about it, which again is totally fair but not exactly conducive to open dialogue.

This is Lady Gaga’s first Academy Award nomination, though she did perform that weird tribute to The Sound of Music at last year’s ceremony, a moment a lot of people liked much more than I did. She has confirmed she will be back to perform this song at this year’s ceremony, which if nothing else, should be an emotional moment. Warren has been nominated eight times, including last year for “Grateful” from Beyond the Lights, but she has never won. This could be her year.

“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey – Ugh. Written by The Weeknd, Belly, Jason “DaHeala” Quenneville, and Stephan Moccio, all first-time nominees, the song is fine. I am just mad I had to watch this movie to write this piece. “Earned It” is a credibly sexy song, but it is wasted on possibly the least sexy movie ever made about sex. There is not one redeeming thing about this movie, up to and including the fact that this fairly solid composition is deployed in such unmemorable ways.

“Earned It” was a top-five hit on the U.S. singles charts and is nominated for three Grammy Awards this weekend, so its cultural cache is enough that it could strike a chord with Oscar voters – younger ones, most likely. The Weeknd’s performance at the Academy Awards ceremony also promises to be one of the weirder musical moments in the show’s history, so that should be fun as well.

“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction – This song is long and plodding and plays over the end credits of the film, though its piano theme is used extensively throughout the score. I cannot fathom how this was included over 69 other eligible songs. I am glad it was because it led me and hopefully others to this great documentary with an urgent message, but the fact remains this was not even the best original song to play over the last 10 minutes of the film. That would be J. Ralph and Sia’s “One Candle,” which for whatever reason was not eligible for a nomination.

J. Ralph was previously nominated for the song “Before My Time” from Chasing Ice, another environmental documentary, while this is co-songwriter Antony Hegarty’s first nomination. At best, the song is so inconsequential that it gives viewers time to reflect on the message laid out in director Louis Psihoyos’ mass extinction documentary. “Manta Ray” probably should have no place in this category, but at least it comes from one of the best films of the year.

“Simple Song #3” from Youth – From the only movie actually about a composer, David Lang’s “Simple Song #3” is the only nominated song this year that fits my idea of what a Best Original Song winner should be. It is integral to the plot, and it is used well within the context of the storytelling, which if you think about it is not a high bar to clear. The entire subtext of director Paolo Sorrentino’s lugubrious meditation on aging is whether the main character can come to terms with the legacy his songs have created for him.

We hear certain themes from the song throughout Lang’s score for the film, and everything builds up to the audience finally hearing the song in its entirety. It needs to land with authority and with conviction, and it does – for about the first two minutes. Unfortunately, the song lasts for about six minutes. The extended runtime of the song is infuriating at first, then laughable, and finally exhausting, coming as it does at the end of a rather taxing film experience.

The final analysis

Throw a dart. I would say it comes down to “Writing’s on the Wall” and “Til It Happens to You” with a slim possibility that “Earned It” sneaks through to the win. More voters obviously will have seen the big-budget Bond picture and the based-on-a-bestseller sex movie than the independent documentary, but it might not matter. Lady Gaga’s star power is such that people may vote for it just because it is her, whether or not they have seen the movie. On top of that, she has been everywhere recently, including a knockout performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. So if pressed, I would bet my money on the culturally ubiquitous star walking away with this award.

Will win: “Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground

Should win: “Simple Song #3” from Youth

Should have been here: “Feels Like Summer” from Shaun the Sheep Movie

A quick note on “Feels Like Summer,” written by Ilan Eshkeri, Nick Hodgson, and Tim Wheeler, from the Best Animated Feature nominee Shaun the Sheep Movie: It is the only eligible song I have heard that fulfills the criteria I think of when I think of Best Original Song and manages to be entertaining at the same time. It is used multiple times throughout the film in different arrangements, and it ultimately proves necessary to resolving the main conflict of the plot in an extraordinary sequence that pays off narratively and emotionally.

Tomorrow: Best Original Score