Phil Collins has an Oscar. He won it in 1999 for the song “You’ll Be In My Heart” from Tarzan. I have two problems with this. One – “Blame Canada” from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut should have won. Two – I don’t think that the Oscars should have a best song category.
Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean best score; that’s as important as any other category. A musical score can make or break a film. I’m talking specifically about best song. The category was introduced in the 7th award ceremony and has been around ever since, and I honestly have no idea why. Without using Google try and name 5 winners of the best song category. I tried it I could name about 3, and I’m a huge film nerd. Why should the Oscars honour 1 song just because it was created specifically for a film? Have you ever left the cinema thinking that song should win an Oscar? I can name one film where a single song was an integral part of the story, “Falling Slowly” from Once and that’s it.
That’s a worthy song. Let me list a couple of other winner/nominees:
- 1985 “Say You, Say Me” — White Nights • Music and lyrics: Lionel Richie – Won.
- 1991 “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” — Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves • Music: Michael Kamen • Lyrics: Bryan Adams and Robert John Lange – Nominated.
- 1993 “The Day I Fall in Love” — Beethoven’s 2nd • Music and lyrics: Carole Bayer Sager, James Ingram and Cliff Magness – Nominated.
- 1997 “How Do I Live” — Con Air • Music and lyrics: Diane Warren. – Nominated.
I love Con Air I really do. But there is no way that any part of it should have been nominated for an Oscar.
There are hundreds of award ceremonies that honour music; many of them honour music and film. The Academy Awards has no reason to keep the category anymore. Every year the ceremony is criticized for being too long. By losing best song they could easily save at least 20 to 30 minutes once you include the presenting of the award and the performance of the songs. Would anyone really miss it?
Every year around 75 songs are shortlisted and narrowed down to what are usually 5 songs. However at last year’s ceremony there were only two nominees and this brings me to my last problem. How hard is the academy really trying if they decided to pick only two songs? They didn’t even bother to have a live performance last year; that’s only happened 3 times since the category was created (1989, 2010, and 2012). The Oscars are slowly but surely losing their prestige, personally I think it’s about time they tried something really different. Out with some redundant awards an in with something exciting, how about best stunt? Anything to take my mind of the fact that Phil Collins has an Oscar…