Oscars Spotlight: Music
Will Bruno or Bond prevail in Original Song? Meanwhile, the Dune show continues in Original Score.
The Nominees:
Original Song
"Be Alive" from KING RICHARD
Music and Lyric by DIXSON and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
"Dos Oruguitas" from ENCANTO
Music and Lyric by Lin-Manuel Miranda
"Down To Joy" from BELFAST
Music and Lyric by Van Morrison
"No Time To Die" from NO TIME TO DIE
Music and Lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell
"Somehow You Do" from FOUR GOOD DAYS
Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
Who Will Win: No Time to Die
Who Could Win: Encanto
Who Should Win: Encanto
Original Score
DON'T LOOK UP
Nicholas Britell
DUNE
Hans Zimmer
ENCANTO
Germaine Franco
PARALLEL MOTHERS
Alberto Iglesias
THE POWER OF THE DOG
Jonny Greenwood
Who Will Win: Dune
Who Could Win: The Power of the Dog
Who Should Win: It’s a tie between The Power of the Dog and Dune.
Image Credit: The New York Times and imdb.com
Co-host of The Big Picture, Amanda Dobbins, has a legendary take that she whips out every year in anticipation of the Oscars: that the Original Song category is broken and, if we’re being less generous, is dumb. She says this because so often nominees are end-credits songs no one remembers just so that a.) films can attach a high profile musical artist to their film and b.) so that the Oscars can then invite said high profile musical artist to perform live. Dobbins argues that the eligibility of end-credits songs makes the category seem irrelevant and random. Instead, the Oscar should go to a song that appears in the film and is actively a part of the story somehow.
Some recent winners that prove the category’s potential include “Shallow,” a song that Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform in A Star Is Born and Coco’s “Remember Me,” which not only made me cry but serves as the emotional core of the Pixar film’s story. Meanwhile, does anyone remember the anthem Common & John Legend’s wrote for Selma in 2014? Or the new song Elton John wrote for the biopic about himself just so it would qualify for the original song category?
I really like all these artists and I’m not saying their songs are bad. This year, Beyoncé (you heard me — Beyoncé) got nominated for the end-credits song for King Richard, she’s scheduled to perform at the Oscars, and I actually think the song is a good listen that captures some of the themes of the film. But it’s still just barely a part of the movie. I agree with Dobbins with the tenuous tie the songs have to the movies and how much the category’s nominees actually reflect music as a part of filmmaking. When I look back at the history of winners in this category, it appears that Academy voters share this sentiment because if a song that actually appears in its movie has been nominated, it usually wins.
The one glaring exception to this anti-end credits song argument are Bond movie songs, which are also usually written and/or performed by famous musical artists. These songs are a whole different beast, not only because they have a long history and are almost a musical tradition unto themselves, but because they establish the mood of a Bond film. So, even though the songs mainly appear in the opening credits and not in the film proper, they still contribute to the franchise storytelling of our favorite MI6 agent.
I was surprised to learn that Bond title themes don’t actually have a long history of winning at the Oscars. The first to be nominated was Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” in 1973, but one didn’t win until Adele’s “Skyfall” in 2013. Adele’s win set a short-term precedent that allowed Sam Smith to win two years later for “Writing’s on the Wall,” which appeared in Spectre. I need to pause briefly to acknowledge the late Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name” from Casino Royale (2006). I played that brooding alternative rock single on loop on my iPod nano and doing so got me through my PhD exams that year. It was snubbed by Oscar, not even nominated. And there were only three nominees that year!
The recent rise of Bond themes at the Oscars puts Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell in a very strong position going into this year’s Oscars. And the fact that they’ve already won a Grammy for the song certainly doesn’t hurt. I’ve heard critical responses ranging from this is one of the best Bond songs to this song is super boring. I’m somewhere in between. I think it’s pretty good, but not the best. Regardless, Billie Eilish has a lot of celebrity cachet, making how much people like the song itself a moot point. Pundits unilaterally give the impression that predicting anything other than “No Time to Die” is a big risk.
The only other nominee even remotely in the conversation here is Lin Manuel Miranda’s “Dos Oruguitas” from Disney’s Encanto. It’s hard to deny the massive popularity of the film and its music, especially with families and TikTok-ers. The catchiest song from the film, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” has not only gone viral; it’s been at the top of the Billboard chart for weeks.
Some pundits entertain (but never commit to) the idea that Bruno’s popularity may inspire voters to cast a ballot for “Dos Oruguitas” because it’s the closest they can get to voting for the more upbeat ear worm. Many shake their heads at Disney submitting this song to the Academy over other more popular ones, but Lin Manuel Miranda has explained that “Dos Oruguitas” or “Two Caterpillars” conveys the core story and themes of Encanto best. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” unsurprisingly, focuses on just one character. Still, the primacy of Bruno’s song is so obvious that ABC has advertised that the Oscars telecast will feature the very first live performance of the banger.
Others still have noted that Miranda is pop culture royalty at this point, and the narrative of him being one Oscar away from an EGOT may sway some voters. I would argue that this type of voter is likely not the same voter who just wants to see Billie Eilish win an award, which means that this race is closer than most pundits think.
And yet, I’m sticking with my “No Time to Die” prediction, like a coward. I find the arguments for Encanto extremely compelling, but I’m worried about predicting with my heart rather than my head and believing these theories because they align with what I would vote for myself. “Dos Oruguitas” might not be the catchiest song my kids and I play in the car nearly every morning on the way to school, but it’s still poignant and beautiful. And, as I noted in my review of the film, the flashback scene it plays over is absolutely heartbreaking, in large part because of the emotional potency of the song. I burst into tears just copying and pasting the YouTube video in here.
While the Original Song category can sometimes attract nominees that are barely relevant to the films in which they appear, Original Score has the opposite problem of flying under the radar to the point at which few recognize how large a contribution composers make to a film’s identity. Beyond John Williams, can you name any other film score composers? I can come up with three or four, including current nominee and projected winner Hans Zimmer, but I’m a film nerd who obsessively tracks this stuff.
The Academy, balking under the pressure ABC has put on them to keep the ceremony under three hours and boost ratings, has also apparently decided that film composers don’t need much of a spotlight because, along with seven other categories, Original Score will not be a part of the live telecast. Instead, documentary short, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live action short, and sound will be announced an hour before the televised show starts and then edited down to be inserted in between the remaining categories announced during the live broadcast. Film critics and industry members are naturally up in arms about this. Anne Thompson of IndieWire has very wisely tried to calm everyone down by saying we should wait and see how the producers will actually represent these eight categories during the ceremony before we get mad about it. But even if those edits do a decent job of honoring the winners, the gesture of relegating them to a separate, off-air time communicates that they matter less than the creators who dodged the cut. It’s not a good look no matter how it pans out on the day.
All this is to say that Hans Zimmer is going to win his second Oscar for his genius work in Dune — work that, according to The New York Times, is so innovative that it “defies Western musical notation” — and most of the world is going to find out about it in a Tweet before the Oscars even start. That’s messed up.
I’m fairly confident that Zimmer will win because I’ve seen so much press highlighting how he came up with the music for Dune. An abundance of behind the scenes content is a surefire sign that the film is indeed campaigning. From those profiles and interviews emerges a clear and compelling narrative that Villeneuve tasked Zimmer with creating a sound for planets we’ve never been to, and Zimmer delivered by creating entirely new instruments and sounds. Plus, Hans Zimmer is, as I mentioned earlier, a recognizable name brand in Hollywood. In my school days, I owned CDs of the soundtracks to both Gladiator and The Lion King, for which he won his first Oscar. He’s written the scores for countless other beloved movies: Rain Man, Inception, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight, to name a few.
While Radiohead lead guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood is not as well-known as a film composer, he seems, at least among critics, to be as well-respected as Zimmer. I’ve been hearing a lot of, “he’ll win next time” talk from pundits, and I think saying so inadvertently downplays how good The Power of the Dog’s score is. In the same way Jane Campion subverts and comments on tropes from the traditional Western, Greenwood experiments and remixes with the musical motifs of the genre to create an ominous, tense, yet lyrical score. A lot of it sounds like creepy Aaron Copland, and I love that. The score also has a bigger narrative burden in this film, which is quiet, slow, and relies heavily on subtext. While I know it seems like I’m biased towards Dune in many categories, The Power of the Dog was also one of my favorite films from the past year, and I’d love for it to win as many statues as it can as well. Whether I pick Greenwood over Zimmer or vice versa, honestly, changes depending on the day.
Image Credit: Variety
The Power of the Dog’s clear lead when nominations came out, however, seems to have dwindled in the past few weeks. And so, I must relegate my prediction of its score to remote upset status. I’ll get to this more when I explain my predictions for Best Picture, but if The Power of the Dog isn’t winning Best Picture, but it is winning Director, and it had so many nominations to start with, then loose Oscar logic would dictate that it has to surprise us with a win in a category or two somewhere. (Thanks to Matt Neglia at The Next Best Picture podcast for convincing me how important a consideration this is.) I’m currently placing my bet for that on Cinematography (more on why another day), but that could change between now and Sunday. Original Score would also be a reasonable place to flag an unexpected win to accompany Campion’s.
Alas, I’m starting to spoil future posts! Give these two scores a listen, and, while you’re at it, add Alexandre Desplat’s score for The French Dispatch, because it should have been nominated as well. I’m still mad that film got completely shut out of the Oscars.