Hey, Oscar, heard these?
Here’s a look at songs that could’ve been nominees instead of ‘Alone Yet Not Alone.’
The poor little Oscar song category just can’t seem to get a break. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this week struck the title song from little-known faith-based film “Alone Yet Not Alone” from contention, placing the spotlight once again on a field that’s struggled to get in tune with critical and popular consensus.
The category was little more than a joke just two years ago, when Oscar voters could only be troubled to find two songs worthy of contention. But the field made great leaps forward last year and had appeared to this year as well, as Oscar voters once again recognized a full five songs and showed a willingness to step beyond the comfort zone of musically inclined movies.
“Alone Yet Not Alone” was the clear underdog in a category that featured “Let It Go” from “Frozen,” “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2,” “Ordinary Love” from “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” and “The Moon Song” from “Her.” It was also the center of an awards season controversy.
The nomination of “Alone Yet Not Alone” raised questions from the start. The song by Bruce Broughton and Dennis Spiegel is from a little-seen film about 18th century colonists in America, but its outsider status wasn’t why it attracted attention.
Broughton is a wellknown industry name who has multiple Emmy awards and a previous Oscar nomination for his score to “Silverado,” but he has also served on the academy’s board of governors and is a former chair of the music branch. He currently serves on the executive committee of the academy’s 239-memberstrong music branch, whose members vote on the song nominations.
It looked as though Oscar voters had simply nominated one of their own. Ultimately, the academy said Broughton improperly emailed members of the branch during the voting period, urging them to listen to “Alone Yet Not Alone.”
“No matter how well-intentioned the communication, using one’s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one’s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage,” read a statement from academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs.
And poof, the song is now erased from Oscar contention, and the academy will not be replacing it with another tune.
As the debate now shifts to whether the academy made the right decision (Broughton has stated his email went to only about 70 people and was the only way to draw attention to such a small film), the Oscar song field is now left with a gaping hole where a better song should have been from the start (from a critical standpoint, “Alone Yet Not Alone” is stately, reverential — the hymn as movie prop).
Though it would be hard to argue against any song other than “Frozen’s” “Let It Go” winning this year’s original song Oscar, here’s a few that should have been contenders.
“So You Know What It’s Like” from “Short Term 12”: “Short Term 12,” a relatively little-known indie film that took the audience award at the L.A. Film Festival, is named for the foster care group home for children under 18 where it’s set. “So You Know What It’s Like,” performed by Marcus (Keith Stanfield), who’s nearing 18 and mandatory release, shows the power of communicating through song. When Marcus lets the viewer in on his furious yet heart-wrenching lyric book in “Short Term 12,” audiences receive a bracing look into a character’s soul and way of life. What he can say in a rap is what he can’t say in a conversation. He picks up speed and confidence as the rap builds and paints a vision of what it’s like to live “a life not knowing what a
normal life’s like.”
“My Lord Sunshine (Sunrise)” from “12 Years a Slave”: A work song, a spiritual, a blues lament, a communal statement — “My Lord Sunshine (Sunrise)” is all of the above and more. Nicholas Britell’s studious composition of rhythm and vocals opens “12 Years a Slave,” scoring a moment when a group of slaves is chopping sugar cane. There’s function in the song, as the beat and the vocal call-and-response are timed to doing a job, but there’s far more desperation and salvation in these 70-plus seconds. What Britell accomplished is no easy feat, as it’s a spiritual that feels and sounds of the era and deftly weaves in religious imagery with the daily horror of the slaves’ lives.
“100$ Bill” from “The Great Gatsby”: While there’s lots of music in “The Great Gatsby,” none of it captures the film’s clash of styles and tones as well as Jay Z’s “100$ Bill.” Modern, glitchy and full of namechecking references to the past, the song feels trapped on a merry-go-round of depravation with Jay Z and his stuttered phrasing unable to find solid ground. A choir is heard in the background, jazzy music from the ’ 20s fades in and out, and the repetitive digital jerks conjure a festive yet demented feel.
“Oblivion” from “Oblivion”: The standout piece on M83’s score to the Tom Cruise sci-fi f lick was the film’s closing song, an outgrowth of the score that does away with many of its more traditionally cinematic trappings. Its bright synths and schizophrenic rhythms — alternating throughout between spacious and spastic — gives the song the feel of being caught in an intergalactic windstorm. Melodic gusts come fast but then pull up suddenly, and Norwegian vocalist Susanne Sundfør doesn’t try to command or tame it but lets her verses swell and stretch as needed.