Karen O will perform “The Moon Song” from “Her” live on the 86th Academy Awards, making her the fourth and final Best Original Song nominee to be confirmed for the show.
Previously, the Academy announced that Pharrell Williams would perform “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2,” Idina Menzel would perform “Let It Go” from “Frozen” and U2 would perform “Ordinary Love” from “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”
The four performances will be the first time in three years, and only the second time in the last six years, that all the nominated songs will be performed on the Oscar show.
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Karen O, the singer in the indie rock band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, wrote “The Moon Song” with “Her” director Spike Jonze. The song is first heard in the movie in a bare-bones version performed by Scarlett Johannson as the voice of the operating system named Samantha, and then is heard again over the end credits in a full-band version performed by Karen O.
The category originally had five nominees, with “Alone Yet Not Alone” from the film of the same name as the fifth. But the AMPAS Board of Governors rescinded that nomination because of what it ruled to be inappropriate campaigning by the song’s co-writer, Bruce Broughton.
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Last year, producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron – who are also producing this year’s show – had two of the nominated songs performed in full, a third done in a truncated version as part of a medley, and the final two heard briefly over film clips. The year before, neither of the two nominated songs were performed on the show – and neither were the five nominees in 2010, two years before that.
The song nominees are also expected to be a part of an evening devoted to the animated scores and songs at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday, Feb. 27, three days before the Oscars.