With over 40 Grammy wins among the nominees, this year’s race for Best Original Song is especially stacked with music royalty, from the biggest pop stars in the world to a rock icon to the guy who wrote Hamilton and finally to Oscars’ biggest Cinderella story. And even with that kind of star power, songwriters who landed on the shortlist but didn’t make the final five include U2, Jay-Z, Jennifer Hudson, Carole King and last year’s winner, H.E.R. (As for Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” it may be the biggest movie song of the year but it wasn’t entered in this race.)
“BE ALIVE” from King Richard, DIXSON and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
Not only are Beyoncé and the Williams sisters each at the top of their respective games, they consider themselves mutual fans. Serena Williams once appeared in a Beyoncé music video, and the singer’s King Richard track embodies the film’s themes of sisterhood, Blackness and self-confidence. “Couldn’t wipe this Black off if I tried,” Beyoncé sings as part of an uplifting harmony. “This is hustle personified.”
“DOS ORUGUITAS” from Encanto, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda has a chance to EGOT this year, and he can do so with a song that is the first he ever wrote entirely in Spanish. The guitar-picked lullaby draws from Colombian and Puerto Rican standards, and the emotional performance by Colombian pop-singer Sebastián Yatra certainly sounds more elegant as “Dos Oruguitas” than the English translation “Two Caterpillars.” “The metaphor itself came to me in Spanish, which is very rare for me,” Miranda said. “I’m pretty English-dominant, but I wanted a song that felt like it always existed, that it had been sung around campfires as a lullaby for many years.”
“DOWN TO JOY” from Belfast, Van Morrison
Could director Kenneth Branagh have tapped anyone but Belfast’s own Van Morrison for his Irish ‘60s nostalgia drama? “Down To Joy” plays over the Belfast opening credits, still in color and in modern day, but it’s a timeless horn-spiked Morrison reverie. Branagh said that Morrison was hearing a “solo saxophone” in his head as he wrote the wistful track and the instrumental interludes that run throughout the film. “He refers to himself as a corner boy—that’s where he learned his music, out on the street corners and under the street lamps,” Branagh said of Morrison. “He has this amazing blend of the Celtic and the international, and he understood the mood of the film.”
“NO TIME TO DIE” from No Time to Die, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell
In recent years, Bond theme songs have done quite well with the Oscars, with Adele’s “Skyfall” and Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On the Wall” (from Spectre) both winning in this category. And if you feel old thinking that Billie Eilish, along with O’Connell, could be halfway to an EGOT by age 20, just remember she wrote “No Time to Die” when she was still a teenager. More impressive is that beyond Eilish’s signature haunting and hushed tones, she manages to go full Shirley Bassey. “I was really, really stepping out of my comfort zone, and I was very scared,” Eilish said. “But we knew that we needed the belt or the song wouldn’t work.”
“SOMEHOW YOU DO” from Four Good Days, Diane Warren
“When you think it’s the end of the road … (and) you’ll never get through/Somehow you do,” Reba McEntire sings on “Somehow You Do.” And perhaps when you think the movie is too small and Diane Warren couldn’t possibly be nominated for an Oscar for the 13th time, somehow she does. The song from the Glenn Close/Mila Kunis addiction drama taps into what we were all feeling during the pandemic. “Here I was writing this song for this movie, but I’m going, ‘God, this feels like outside of the movie—this is what we’re all living at the moment,” Warren said.
Steve’s Perspective
If Sam Smith can win an Oscar for a very bad James Bond song, shouldn’t Billie Eilish be able to win one for a very good Bond song? Probably, unless some of that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” mojo rubs off on “Dos Oruguitas,” the Encanto song that was nominated and is probably the other other nominee with a real chance. As for 13-time nominee Diane Warren, still looking for her first win, maybe she needs to write the next Bond or Disney song.
