Classic Songs Denied Oscar Nominations
Filed under: Awards, Newsstand, Oscar Watch
If you comb through the Oscar nominees from the past 79 years, it might look like a pretty decent list of quality films. But if you start to consider the titles that weren't nominated, you can get a more complete picture of just how badly they have failed to represent the broad spectrum. It's easy to find neglected Best Picture contenders that weren't nominated (Touch of Evil, Vertigo, 2001: A Space Odyssey, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Do the Right Thing, Mulholland Drive, etc.), but a bit harder to sift through some of the other categories.A recent report in Variety looks at the most dubious and most annoying category, Best Song. Music expert Jon Burlingame goes through ten years and finds ten glaring examples of songs not nominated, including "Someday My Prince Will Come" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), "A Hard Day's Night" from A Hard Day's Night (1964) and anything from Saturday Night Fever (1977). The winner in 1977 was "You Light Up My Life" by Debby Boone from a movie called You Light Up My Life that has apparently been almost entirely forgotten.The list negelects perhaps the most glaring omission of all: Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" from Do the Right Thing (1989), which was not only a brilliant song, but also a key song in terms of the movie. (The winner was "Under the Sea," from The Little Mermaid, also a good song.)
The song category has long needed an overhaul. I suspect even the Academy members realize this; their choice of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" last year smacked of desperation.
The problem is that no one really writes songs for movies anymore. Comden and Green and Porter are all gone. Nowadays, movies simply scoop up some recent radio hit, or hipper directors scrounge the record bins for unknown moldy oldies. The Oscars should allow these song selections to qualify for awards. I mean, "Be My Baby" wasn't written for Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), but today they go together like turntables and beer bottles. Same goes for "Unchained Melody" and Ghost (1990) and "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Wayne's World (1992). And what about "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" from Pulp Fiction (1994)? That song was actually recorded for the movie, but was disqualified because -- as a Neil Diamond cover tune -- it wasn't actually written for the movie. (The same goes for "Mad World" and Donnie Darko.) Now that's small potatoes.
Better yet, why don't we eliminate this category altogether and leave it to the Grammys? We should do it soon before some "American Idol" contestant makes it and gets to put "Oscar winner" on their resume. That would be more than I could bear.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-30-2006 @ 8:52PM
Neil said...
"Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" by Urge Overkill was not recorded for the movie. Tarantino found it on some import EP or such. I've heard him tell the story a number of times.
I seem to recall that "Love is a Red Rose" was recorded for the movie. I think it even would have qualified, if anyone could remember it being in the movie.
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11-30-2006 @ 9:07PM
augustburns2 said...
Never. NEVER should previously recorded music be eligible for a nomination for Best Song. That’s stupid! They should only include songs that were written for the screen.
If films want their songs to be nominated in this category, then they should have original songs.
I am sad of some of the omissions over the years. Saturday Night Fever should have been nominated, but “You Light Up My Life” is a pretty good, sappy song.
And "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" was a great song from that movie. I couldn’t get it out of my head (well, the melody). Although, I was somewhat shocked at its winning, I was happy that it did!
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12-01-2006 @ 12:30AM
Ray said...
If I'm not mistaken, it is called "Best Original Song", so any cover is automatically out. As it should be, since most covers aren't particularly different from the original version. You know what's worse than some American Idol winner winning an Oscar? John Goodman being an Oscar-winning singer. Yup, he won an Oscar for singing a song in Monsters, Inc. WTF is it with the Academy and Disney songs, anyway?
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12-01-2006 @ 2:04PM
Jeff said...
Ray - John Goodman didn't win an Oscar...Randy Newman won for writing that song. The Oscar goes to the songwriter, not the singer (unless they are one in the same). That being said, the fact that Randy Newman has an Oscar makes me cringe.
Anyway, the Academy does need to do something about this category. When a song like "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge is unable to be nominated because it was written for another film, but never produced or utilized, there's something wrong. It was an original song that no one had heard before.
At least this year, Dreamgirls will likely have some new songs in it to compete in this category making it somewhat legit. With the era of the musical gone, though (even Disney is done making its animated flicks as musicals), perhaps this category needs to get the boot, too.
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12-01-2006 @ 8:42AM
Scott MacDonough said...
Even more outrageous than the Academy's overlooking "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was its brush-off of "The Way You Look Tonight"--not only one of Jerome Kern's loveliest ballads but also the best of many other classics from the Astaire/Rogers canon (in this case, 1936's "Swing Time"). Equally mystifying was the award for Best Song to the hideous "Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" (from Garland's overrated "Harvey Girls") Go figure!
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12-01-2006 @ 10:22AM
Alex said...
The Oscars should have a separate category for soundtracks and how well the songs in the film are used. It's a little bit more involved than just throwing songs over the movie. I know the Grammys have something like that but I think the Oscars ought to recognize that sort of achievement.
But it should be separate from Best Original Song.
And if they have that category, that might keep Scorsese from using Gimme Shelter yet again!
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