A Century of Film
Original Song
Like with score, the first awards for such film music came in 1934 when the two categories were added at the Academy Awards. Unlike with Score, where they seemed to be confusion for quite a while over what qualified, the Oscars from the start tried to limit this category to songs that were written for the film in which they appeared. This would be more stringent than what the Golden Globes would eventually do, after finally getting started in this category in 1961 and much more so than the BAFTAs which only tried a false-start with such a category and then gave up after just a few years.
Various rules and machinations over the years made the category confusing. For years, the Oscars allowed every studio to submit a song (and automatically receive a nomination) but that also meant that studios were limited to the one nomination (and thus films were as well). The Oscars would later have different rules about how many songs from a film could be eligible and when they had to play in the film while the Globes would have no such rules. Also, because of the rule on original songs, people would often be confused, with some people thinking that a film like Casablanca or Singin’ in the Rain should have earned an Oscar for a song that had existed for years.
For my own rules, I have tried, with some variations, to stick to the Oscar concept. That means I try to find films in which a song is written for the film that contains both original music (ruling out any song that is new but uses an old tune) and lyrics (ruling out a song like “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” in which the lyrics were from the novel even if the music was new). For the most part, I have tried to rely on the old oscars.org database which listed songs in various years but that database sometimes listed ineligible songs and sometimes didn’t list songs that actually earned nominations. In some cases, I have gone with what I know or at least suspect to be the case.
My own list limits itself to five songs in a film only because my Top 5 only has room for five. But I don’t care which songs were Oscar submitted in determining my own five.
I will also go ahead and point out my posts on the Top 250 songs of both the 80’s and the 90’s, each of which include several songs that earn Nighthawk wins or nominations. Those posts will go into depth on each song listed.
My Top 5 Original Songs in Film History:
- “Over the Rainbow”, The Wizard of Oz, 1939
- “The Rainbow Connection, The Muppet Movie, 1979
- “Help”, Help!, 1965
- “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, Mary Poppins, 1964
- “A Hard Day’s Night”, A Hard Day’s Night, 1964
