The music industry’s presence at last night’s Academy Awards ceremony was, in comparison to previous years, fairly minimal. In a terrific decision, we were only subjected to two Best Original Song nominee performances rather than five, one being HUNTR/X bringing Kpop Demon Hunters’ “Golden” into reality and the other a fabulous, multi-generational juke joint rendition of “I Lied to You” from Sinners. The “I Lied to You” segment was among my personal highlights from the ceremony, as Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq led a tribute to Sinners’ visual style with a high-drama blues homage, featuring appearances by Shaboozey, Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Christone Ingram, Alice Smith, Bobby Rush, and Brittany Howard.
The “Golden” performance was great, too. After Kpop Demon Hunters picked up the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film earlier in the telecast, performers EJAE, Rei Ami, and Audrey Nuna graced the stage while backup dancers waved golden flags and celebs and nominees alike waved lightbulb-shaped glowsticks in the audience. Hearing “Golden” brought to life beyond the animation stills only made it more obvious that the #1 hit was going to take home Best Original Song. And, sure enough, Lionel Richie, who won the category for “Say You, Say Me” in 1986, later appeared to deliver the award to Kpop Demon Hunters. EJAE, while accepting her trophy, tearfully told the audience she was proud that “everyone is singing our song.” She’s definitely right. Last year, Kpop Demon Hunters became the first soundtrack to have four Top 10 hits charting at the same time (Waiting to Exhale had five songs in the Top 10 in 1995 and 1996, but never all at once).
Because the Academy decided to showcase only two of the five Best Original Song nominees, it all but confirmed that the other three nominees were toast, including Diane Warren, who now has a record 17 Oscar nominations without a win. Warren wrote “Dear Me” for her own documentary, Diane Warren: Relentless, and tapped Kesha to sing it. Previously, sound mixer Greg P. Russell held the record for his winless streak (17 noms, no dice), but his nomination for 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi was rescinded in 2017 for violating Oscar campaigning rules, dropping his total to 16 and paving the way for Warren to, after nine consecutive Best Original Song losses since 2016, assume the infamous mantle herself. Warren probably should have won Best Original Song in 1998 for penning “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” for Armageddon (she lost to “When You Believe” from The Prince of Egypt). Now, in what I can only imagine is some kind of humiliation ritual agreed upon by both the Academy and Warren herself, the songwriter has lost the category 13 times in a row. And yet she is, in a word, relentless.
In a very good In Memoriam segment (I’m docking the Academy a point for only briefly showing the late Udo Kier), Billy Crystal, Rachel McAdams, and Barbra Streisand paid tribute to Rob and Michele Singer Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford, respectively. As soon as Streisand took the stage, a friend texted me, “if babs doesn’t sing rn…..,” to which I passionately concurred. And, sure enough, after praising Redford’s longtime political advocacy and drive to protect artistic voices, she called him “an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail, Bob had real backbone, on and off the screen” and ended her tribute by singing an excerpt from “The Way We Were,” the theme song which illuminated the film she and Redford seminally made together 53 years ago.
Also featured last night: Ludwig Göransson rightfully won his third Best Original Score Oscar, this time for Sinners. You can read Sam Rosenberg’s recent interview with the Black Panther and Oppenheimer composer here.
