A Century of Film: Original Song

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:

1. “Over the Rainbow”, The Wizard of Oz, 1939
2. “The Rainbow Connection, The Muppet Movie, 1979
3. “Help”, Help!, 1965
4. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, Mary Poppins, 1964
5. “A Hard Day’s Night”, A Hard Day’s Night, 1964

Advertisements

 

All I Ever Wanted, All I Ever Needed is Here in My List: The Top 250 Songs of the 90’s

In my 80’s post, I made a lot of specific lists.  I didn’t do a specific list post for the 90’s, so I will address some of those lists here.  Among the 250 songs in this post, you will find songs that would fit the following lists, so there will at least be a #1 for all of these lists, just by going through this list: Best Song Written for a Film, Best One-Hit Wonder (using this list), Best Song by a One-Hit Wonder that Isn’t Their ‘Hit’ (I count seven and in four of those cases their ‘hit’ doesn’t make my list), Best B-Side, Best Cover (every decade from the 50’s through the 90’s has at least one and even the 30’s has one), Best Long Song, Funniest Song, Best Billboard #1 Single (because of changes to how music was sold and tracked, there were a lot fewer #1’s in the 90’s because they stayed on the list longer, but still, there are only 5 #1’s on the list, as opposed to 37 in the 80’s), Best British #1 That Didn’t Hit #1 in the US, Grammy Winner for Song of the Year.  There is no list for Best Cover of a 90’s Song post 1999 because of the songs on the list, only two of them have covers I can honestly recommend and both of those covers were recorded in the 90’s.  There is no Worst Billboard #1 Single because so many of them are so terrible, though the Brits sent “I Wanna Sex You Up”, my second least favorite song of the decade to #1 (thankfully, my least favorite song ever, “Wonderwall” stalled at #2 on the British charts).

Some other ones that aren’t addressed are Best Television Theme (Malcolm in the Middle), Best Song Written for a Stage Musical (“Sunset Boulevard” followed by “The Heat is on in Saigon”), Top Use of a Song in 90’s Movie, Top Video (“Losing My Religion” but other contenders would include “Black or White”, “Right Now”, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Tonight Tonight”), Best Recorded Live Performances (in theory, this automatically goes to “About a Girl” because it really technically belonged on the 80’s list but it’s the Unplugged version that I think is so far superior that it ended up on this list, but there are some other live versions on here that are covers and I do want to point out “Throwing It All Away” on The Way We Walk and “Pocahontas” on Unplugged – there are others that will be pointed out because those songs make the list in their original version), Best Christmas Song (“Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra) and Grammy Winner for Record of the Year (“Tears in Heaven” – it was a terrible decade for this category).

 

Nevermind isn’t #1. Let the Complaining Begin: The Top 50 Albums of the 90’s

For the second decade in a row, my #1 album has some awesome black and white photography from Anton Corbijn.

Introduction:  So these are my top albums of the 90’s.  Once again, these are studio albums only, so no live albums and no compilations of greatest hits, though both of those will be discussed here in this introduction.

Because I didn’t do a big massive post with all sorts of lists like in the 80’s, there are a number of subcategories that I didn’t already address.  For instance, the best debut albums of the decade, which, going down the list, would obviously be lead by Ten, followed, depending on your definition, by Little Earthquakes.  Other debut albums on this list include August and Everything After, New Miserable Experience and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.  Jagged Little Pill is only the first album by Alanis Morissette released in the United States, not her actual first album and the massive success of Nevermind, Dookie, Throwing Copper and Siamese Dream often make people forget the much lesser known first albums by Nirvana, Green Day, Live and Smashing Pumpkins.  Ten is among the greatest debut albums of all-time and Little Earthquakes is up there if you count it as Tori’s first solo album but none of the others approach the list in my 80’s post.

 

This Post will Neither Burn Out nor Fade Away because that song is from 1979: The Top 250 Songs of the 80’s

Before I get into the song list, I’ll go ahead and throw out my favorites from the other decades that I won’t be writing long comprehensive posts about.

 

So, Kick the Bad Green Disintegration Document on Graceland in The River. Oh Mercy! The Top 50 Albums of the 80’s

Without doubt, my #1 album of the decade.

Introduction:  I once had the thought of doing a Top 100 Albums of All-Time post.  But, the problem with that is that, aside from the large swaths of music that I don’t listen to that would have earned me crap from various people who like that music (and since this is an 80’s post, I’ll go with Prince fans as an example), there is the fact that since leaving Borders in 2009 (where we sold music) the new music I have listened to (other than a few artists) has gone drastically down.  So, there will never be a post of my Top 100 Albums.  I will give a brief list here though for a few other decades.  Please note that these lists are all studio albums only, no live or compilation albums.  For top examples of live albums or compilation albums from the 80’s, please look at my original 80’s music post.

 

RCM: La Bamba

Revisiting Childhood Movies Part XXI:

La Bamba

• Director:  Luis Valdez
• Writer:  Luis Valdez
• Producer:  Bill Borden  /  Taylor Hackford
• Stars:  Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, Elizabeth Peña
• Studio:  Columbia
• Award Nominations:  Golden Globe – Picture (Drama)
• Length:  108 min
• Genre:  Musical (Biopic)
• MPAA Rating:  PG-13
• Release Date:  24 July 1987
• Box Office Gross:  $54.21 mil  (#15 – 1987)
• Ebert Rating:  ***
• My Rating:  ***
• My Rank:  #30 (year)
• Nighthawk Nominations:  none
• Nighthawk Notables:  Best Soundtrack
• First Watched:  on video when first released
• Number of Times Watched as a Kid:  5 or so

As a Kid:  I wasn’t that much into music yet in 1987.  Yes, I had been watching videos on MTV for a few years but I didn’t know that much, especially about older music.  In fact, I had a tendency to believe that any song that I didn’t know who was singing it (“Eve of Destruction”, “American Pie”, “The Longest Time”) that it was being sung by The Beatles (when my brother John corrected me on these, he explained that he could understand if I had thought “Eve of Destruction” was sung by Springsteen, but by The Beatles?  I explained that I assumed every major song was sung by The Beatles.).  I hadn’t yet seen The Buddy Holly Story but I had a vague notion of The Day the Music Died because of growing up with “American Pie”.  Then this film came out.  More importantly, since I didn’t see this film in the theater, the soundtrack came out, a soundtrack that my brother Kelly bought during a summer that he and I shared a room.

 

Erik’s Totally Radical Tubular Awesome 80’s Music Lists (that might make you want to gag me with a spoon*): Part I

*:  Or, fuck me gently with a chainsaw, depending on your 80’s movie frame of reference.

 

Introduction:  This wasn’t intended to be a multi-part post or to be so damn long.  In fact, it was originally just going to be a list of my Top 100 Songs of the 80’s.  Then it grew and grew and Veronica kept saying I had to post it or I would never stop adding new lists.  Well, I finally got to writing the most significant part, the first list (the top albums) and the last list (the top songs).  Then, as I added more details in those lists and made them both countdown lists (ending with #1 instead of starting with it), I realized each of those really needed to be their own posts, for length reasons, if nothing else.  So, those two have been spun-off into their own, more detailed posts.  This post is mostly just lists, though there are a lot of them.