Happy Friday! It’s a musical kind of day as today we’re going to check out this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Original Score and Best Original Song. It’s a little strange not seeing some of the usual names this year like Randy Newman, Thomas Newman and John Williams. Don’t worry, though, because Diane Warren made the cut again. We have a lot of first-time nominees this year within these two categories and a couple of interesting possible scenarios regarding what could win. Let’s get it rolling.
First off is the second career nomination for Terence Blanchard for his scoring of Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, a film that last summer upon its Netflix release had a lot of early Oscar buzz but for whatever reason saw that buzz peter out as the year came to a close. This is the sole nomination for the movie, but a worthy one indeed. Blanchard is a prolific composer and trumpeter who has scored and/or performed on a score of 90+ films in his career, and he has won 5 Grammy Awards. He’s also a longtime collaborator with Lee and saw his first Oscar nomination a couple years back for scoring BlackKklansman. The entire score for Da 5 Bloods was recorded in one studio at one time with a full orchestra and has a great feel to it to match the action on-screen.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are names that still may come as a surprise to some when it comes to the Oscars, especially if you know of Reznor’s work as Nine Inch Nails, a heavy industrial band that began in the late 1980’s. However, the duo won Best Original Score for 2010’s The Social Network and are up again twice this year. One of those currently is for Mank, which has the feel and sound of 1940’s Hollywood to match the film’s setting. Reznor and Ross would often have Citizen Kane playing in the studio as they wrote and produced this film’s score for inspiration, and when you watch Mank and close your eyes just to listen to the score, you can feel yourself in that era. And rather than go alphabetical, I’ll just cover their other nomination this year in this same paragraph for Disney/Pixar’s Soul, a nomination which they share with jazz composer/musician Jon Batiste, who is the bandleader of Stay Human, the house band of Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show. The jazz portions of the film were all scored and sometimes performed by Batiste, while the rest of the film score is Reznor and Ross. Those otherworldly settings and scenes are beautifully accompanied by the music here, which definitely have the R/R feel to it minus the Nine Inch Nails loudness. Soul already won the Golden Globe in this category so it is the likely Oscar favorite as well.
However, should it be the favorite? There is a lot of support for Emile Mosseri’s Minari, which is very orchestral and impressively composed and performed. Mosseri wrote the score before the film even started shooting, as he worked simply from the screenplay and wrote how he felt the music should match the tone of each scene. Mosseri also plays piano and sings himself, a member of the indie-rock band The Dig. He’s done work for several TV programs and also scored the 2020 film Kajillionaire. Listening to the score of Minari has a very epic feel to it.
Want more epic? Look no further than News of the World scored by James Newton Howard, who has now a total of 9 career Oscar nominations (7 for Score and 2 for Song). There seem to be several names that pop up every few years in the Best Original Score category that have a lot of career nominations but have never won, and Howard is one of them. His first nomination was for 1992’s The Prince of Tides and this may be the year he finally breaks through because this score has the most epic, classic feel to it, the kind of score that would engulf a movie theater as the film is playing. Howard has won a Grammy and an Emmy, and you probably watched the show ER back in the day and remember that theme music. He wrote that. Howard’s goal here was to create a “broken, fragile” score to match the broken/fragile state of the country in the post-Civil War setting of this film, and he succeeded.
On we go to Best Original Song. Now, a couple of years ago I wrote about every winner in this category, and for the most part, after the 1980’s this category really went off the rails. It seems to teeter on derailing again every now and again, and in 2011 looked to be irreparably damaged as we only saw two songs nominated with the worse of those two songs winning the damn thing. I’d say this year’s list has some good stuff on it overall, nothing that makes me question the overall mindset of the AMPAS. First on the list is “Fight For You” from Judas and the Black Messiah. Music by H.E.R. and Dernst Emile II, lyrics by H.E.R. and Tiara Thomas. H.E.R.–also known as Gabriella Wilson–had quite a 24 hours recently as her Oscar nomination was announced just hours after she won a Grammy for Song of the Year. She is a definite standout in the music industry right now (she in fact also performs this nominated tune) and her mantle could need room for one more award in a few weeks time.
“Hear My Voice” is from The Trial of the Chicago 7 and was written by Daniel Pemberton (music and lyrics) and Celeste Waite (lyrics). Waite performs professionally as just her first name of Celeste, and she sings this nominated tune. Waite and Pemberton began collaborating on a project during the 2020 COVID-forced lockdown and it wound up turning into this song, which caught the ear of none other than Elton John, who raved about it and promoted it as something that fits today’s societal times. The song is heard during the closing of Trial and fits the narrative of the film perfectly.
One of the bigger surprises to me in this year’s overall list of Oscar nominations was the inclusion of “Husavik” here. The song is from the Netflix film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, and while the film wasn’t too well-received by critics, it was VERY well-received by those responsible for the real-life Eurovision Song Contest, as they felt it was a fair and accurate combination of reality and parody. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams perform the song in the film, with McAdams’ vocals dubbed over by Swedish singer Molly Sandén. The music and lyrics were written by Savan Kotecha, Max Grahn and Rickard Göransson, who are also prolific Swedish songwriters and producers in the music industry.
Here is the Diane Warren portion of the blog. It’s an interesting one too, because it’s from an Italian film. The film is The Life Ahead and can currently be seen on Netflix. Sophia Loren actually stars in the film and even appears in the music video. She’s 86. Incredible! The song is “Io Sì”, which translates to English as “Seen”. Warren wrote the music and the original English lyrics, which were than translated by Laura Pausini into Italian. Pausini is a huge Italian music star and she performs the song here. She in fact recorded this song in 5 different languages, English included with Warren’s original composition. It definitely has the classic Diane Warren power ballad feel and sound to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring or passé or anything like that. This is Warren’s 12th career nomination and she’s never won. She absolutely should have won at least once by now but a crappy Sam Smith James Bond song ruined THAT celebration some years back. This already won the Golden Globe in this category so perhaps finally…FINALLY?…this could be Warren’s time.
Our last nominee is “Speak Now” from One Night in Miami…, written by Leslie Odom Jr. and Sam Ashworth. Odom is also nominated this year as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Sam Cooke in this film. You probably know Odom as Aaron Burr in the Broadway production of Hamilton, which you’ve probably watched once or twice (or, if you’re my wife, a few more times. Plus a few more times) on Disney+. It’s a nice tune with Odom channeling his own inner Sam Cooke, who he grew up a big fan of, and he shows off his vocal range nicely in this one. It’s probably the better-odds pick between Odom’s two nominations to take home gold.
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So there we have the Best Original Song and Best Original Score taken care of. I’m glad none of the songs are garbage. That is something every year I’m afraid of, having to say that about one or more of the nominations in that category. We’re almost halfway through the list, and next blog we’ll cover the nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature. See you then.
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