What do the songs “Let the River Run,” “Things Have Changed,” “ It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp,” “Last Dance,” “It Might as Well be Spring, and “It Goes Like It Goes” all have in common? Well, friends and neighbors, they all won an Oscar for the Best Song in a Motion Picture. The Best Song category has always been kind of a tricky thing. A nominated song doesn’t necessarily have to be written expressly for the film in which it is performed. Neither does it have to be an integral part of the plot. The complete song doesn’t have to be sung during the film. A nominated song doesn’t have to be a part of the movie’s musical score…unless the artist who sings the song has also written part of the lyrics or music, they receive no Oscar if the song wins. For the first years of the category there was no limit to the amount of songs that could be nominated in a particular year. Confusing, right?
The first time an Oscar was awarded to a song was in 1934 which was the seventh Academy Awards ceremony. The song was “The Continental” and it was from the movie The Gay Divorcee, a Fred and Ginger musical that has become a classic. Con Conrad wrote the music and Herb Magidson wrote the words. Ginger Rogers sang the song in the movie. By 1934, sound was the norm in films. Only Charlie Chaplin was still making silent movies. All singing and all dancing movie musicals were no longer a novelty and Depression weary audiences were flocking to the movie theaters to see them and enjoy a couple of hours of forgetfulness from the grim realities of the times. Most every American home had a radio, so a song could be heard in living rooms across the land, which also publicized the films they were connected with. The Motion Picture Academy decided it was time to give some recognition to the musical segment of the film industry, which was contributing to box office success.
During the first 16 years in which the Best Song Oscars were presented, the awards went to songs that were associated with musicals. The number of songs nominated in a given year changed. In the first two years of the award’s existence, only three songs were nominated. By the year 1938, ten songs were nominated. In 1939, “Over the Rainbow” won the Oscar. This song was the most popular Oscar winning songs of all time. In 1940, the Disney Studios won its first Best Song Oscar with “When You Wish upon A Star.” In 1942 the winning song was “White Christmas” from the movie Holiday Inn, probably the best known Oscar winning song of all time. In 1945, 14 songs were nominated in the Best Song category. The next year, 1946, the Academy changed the rules so that no more then five songs could be nominated in any given year. It’s been that way ever since.
In 1950, the song “Mona Lisa” won the Best Song Oscar. This was the first time that a song from a definite non-musical won. The song was from the film Captain Carey USA, a post-War spy thriller starring Alan Ladd. The song was a background theme for the movie and a cabaret singer performed it while Carey hooked up with an old flame in one sequence of the film. However, popular singer Nat “King” Cole made a cover version at the same time that went to number one on the Hit Parade and became a pop standard. Cole’s version wasn’t in the film, but it is responsible for the song winning the Oscar.
The 1950s and 60s were the golden age of musicals. With Technicolor, Panavision, CinemaScope, and Stereophonic Sound they were Hollywood’s most prized and acclaimed films of that era. One type of song that didn’t see any kind of Academy recognition was rock ‘n roll. That despised barbaric sound has pretty much been ignored by the Academy. Pop songs such as “Unchained Melody,” “April Love,” “Tammy,” or “Town Without Pity” have been nominated. “Moon River” even won in 1961, but rock music has been invisible to the Academy even if it was written for a film. “Jailhouse Rock” was the best song in a film in 1957, yet the Elvis Presley classic received nary a nomination or consideration that year. “Yesterday” by the Beatles was written for their 1965 film Help, yet it received no Academy Award consideration. About the closest the Academy has come to honoring a rock song was when Issac Hayes won the award for the “Theme from Shaft” in 1971. A disco pop tune “Last Dance,” sung by Donna Summer in the movie Thank God It’s Friday won the Best Song award in 1979. Actor Keith Carradine won an Oscar for writing the music and lyrics for “I’m Easy” for the movie Nashville in 1975. He also sang it in the film and remains the only member of the Carradine family to actually win any kind of Oscar.
In 1977 a film called You Light Up My Life was released to very little fanfare and quickly disappeared from movie screens after a disappointing box office performance. Debbie Boone, released a cover of the title song in the late summer of that year that quickly went to number one on the pop charts, and won a Grammy as best New Artist of the Year and became the top selling 45 record of the 70s.The song received an Oscar nomination. Debbie Boone sang it at the Oscar ceremony even though she didn’t sing it in the film. The song won the best Song of 1977 Oscar.
Beginning in the 1970s, musicals sort of disappeared from the movie screens. Grease, Flash Dance, Fame, Dirty Dancing and Footloose had musical themes and were very popular with theater audiences but as a genre, musicals were not being made in Hollywood. The Oscar-nominated songs of that period were usually written as theme music for drama action, and comedy films. Stevie Wonder, Carly Simon, Lionel Ritchie, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Annie Lennox, Bob Dylan, Melissa Etheridge and Eminem have all won Oscars for movie songs they have written. Barbra Streisand became the first woman to receive a Best Song Oscar as a composer rather then a lyricist for “Evergreen” in 1976 from A Star is Born.
There have been years when there have been several outstanding songs nominated and years when it seemed that all the songs were duds. In 2011 only two songs were nominated. The song “Muppet or Man” won for the Movie The Muppets that year.
Veteran Hollywood song lyricist Sammy Cahn holds the record for most nominations for best song with 26. This, incidentally, is the most Oscar nominations for an individual in any Oscar category. Mr. Cahn won four Oscars. It took Randy Newman ten nominations in the category before he finally won a Best Song Oscar. He now has two Oscars on twelve nominations.
This year there is some controversy in the nominated songs. The song “Alone Yet not Alone” from the film of the same name was nominated in the Best song category. The composer was Bruce Broughton and lyrics by Dennis Spiegel. Mr. Broughton is a Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The nomination was revoked when it was discovered that Mr. Broughton had been politicking fellow Academy board members to support his nomination. Mr. Broughton, who is 68 years old has several Emmy Awards but has never won an Oscar. While he may have felt that time was running out for him, definitely should have known better.
There have been songs that have the Oscar that went on to relative obscurity and are long forgotten. There are songs such as “Unchained Melody,” which was nominated in 1955 but didn’t win, that have gone on to become American classics. There are songs that are happily remembered long after the movies that they first were heard in have been forgotten. As for this year, I predict that a song that I really don’t know much about will win the Oscar for 2013.
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