THe touching ‘Remember Me’ from Pixar’s Coco rounds out the nominations in this year’s Best Original Song category. I’ve written about this song already, during a week of my favorite musical movie moments of 2017, so it’s no secret that it’s a favorite.
Earlier this week I wrote that The Greatest Showman is the only true musical nominated in this category, but I suppose one could argue that Coco earns the label. It’s certainly the closest to a musical that Pixar has come to date.
Mary J. Blige made Oscar history last month, becoming the only performer ever nominated as an actor and Best Song composer in the same year. Blige earned a Supporting Actress nod for her soulful turn in Dee Rees’ Mudbound, and co-wrote the movie’s end credits song with Raphael Saadiq and Taura Stinson.
Mudbound was one of my favorite 2017 films, and one that I bet would have fared even better in the Oscar nominations had it received a proper theatrical release and not been confined to Netflix for most of the country.
Our third Oscar-nominated song comes from the biopic Marshall, starring Black Panther as the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.
The song is performed by soul singer Andra Day and rapper Common, and written by Common and 9-time Best Song nominee Diane Warren. Warren has never won the statue despite her run of nominations, while Common took the prize when he was last nominated, for the song ‘Glory’ in 2015’s Selma.
Surprise hit The Greatest Showman is the only musical nominated in the Best Original Song category this year. (You could make an argument that another nominated film is a musical, but I would argue that you are wrong, and I would be right).
This is one of those movies scoffed at by critics (55% on the Tomatometer!) but loved by audiences. It has hit a nerve, cleaning up at the box office and topping the album charts.
I believe today’s nominated song, which most clearly states one of the film’s central themes, is the key to The Greatest Showman‘s success.
Due to the Winter Olympics, this year’s Academy Awards are ridiculously late (March 4), which buys me a little time to sneak in some pre-Oscars blog posts. Specifically, I’m going to spend the next ten days featuring this year’s Best Original Song nominees as well as five of my favorite Best Original Song winners.
Michigan indie artist Sufjan Stevens is this year’s unlikeliest Best Song nominee. The eclectic multi-instrumentalist will seem as out of place on the Kodak Theatre stage as Elliott Smith did performing ‘Miss Misery’ from Good Will Hunting in 1997.
Meet Me In Montauk 