by Chris Feil
While Soundtracking aims to look at the depth and relationship between movies and their music, one of this series’ minor ambitions is to defend the purpose of Oscar’s much maligned Original Song category. Complain about some of the weak nominees in recent years and you are (alone yet) not alone. But this category has a rich history of classics and film-defining tracks, some of which you may not know have their origins in the cinema. Case in point: holiday staple of hot takes "Baby It's Cold Outside" won the Oscar in 1949 for Neptune's Daughter.
While this year’s nominees run from the unfortunate to the immaculate, I’d also offer that Oscar’s Original Song is currently in an upswing in quality. It has also faced some underwhelming periods (take a look at the 50s) and may never return to its 70s-80s level of radio rotation, but Original Songs remain as essential as the films themselves. So to showcase the category, I’ve ranked the best of the Original Song winners! If your favorite didn’t make the list, consider that a reminder of how much you actually cherish the category...
25. "You'll Never Know" - Hello, Frisco, Hello - 1943
Surpris: in case you didn't know, The Shape of Water's melancholic love ballad actually belongs to this Alice Faye musical.
24. "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" - Dirty Dancing - 1987
23. "Flashdance... What a Feeling" - Flashdance - 1983
22. "Call Me Irresponsible" - Papa's Delicate Condition - 1963
21. "It Goes Like It Goes" - Norma Rae - 1979
20. "Lose Yourself" - 8 Mile - 2002
19. "Take My Breath Away" - Top Gun - 1986
18. "Let It Go" - Frozen - 2013
17. "Skyfall" - Skyfall - 2012
16. "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" - Dick Tracy - 1990
15. "Fame" - Fame - 1980
14. "White Christmas" - Holiday Inn - 1942
13. "When You Wish Upon A Star" - Pinocchio - 1940
12. "The Way You Look Tonight" - Swing Time - 1936
11. "A Whole New World" - Aladdin - 1992
10. "My Heart Will Go On" - Titanic - 1997
Allow me the schmaltz, because this one is as imposing and undeniable as the film itself. Inescapable, even. Yet like the film, you just can't help but submit to it from the jump. It takes some kind of mastery to pull deep emotion out of a pan flute. And come on: it's peak Céline and maybe peak 90s.
9. "Let The River Run" - Working Girl - 1988
Working Girl owes a major debt to this song for how the imperfect-but-still-perfect film aligns itself to an indefatiguable American spirit and the joyous pursuit of the American Dream. Many of these songs define their films, but rarely do they morph them as this does.
8. "Falling Slowly" - Once - 2007
A radio friendly love song, sure, but how quickly we've forgotten the magic of how this unfolds in the moment on screen. On its own we get lost in its open-hearted chorus, but in context its the hesitancy of falling in love that cuts deeper.
7. "Colors of the Wind" - Pocahontas - 1995
Perhaps the most underrated of the Disney musical dominance of the 90s and the most ideologically complex (spare me your "Under the Sea" revisionist thinkpiece). A song in a children's film that neither panders to them or doubts their intelligence.
6. "Theme From Shaft" - Shaft - 1971
Has a song ever built a film's iconography better than this? You have the film and its hero's identity right there in the rhythm, and with it the film's legacy. You simply can't talk about Shaft without including Isaac Hayes' contribution.
5. "Beauty and the Beast" - Beauty and the Beast - 1991
At once capturing a grand sweep of romantic legend while feeling movingly intimate, this title track is as much the peak of 90s Disney music as the film is for the films themselves. It's the culmination of all of the story's hopes and narrative baggage and still feels delicate to the touch. I would read a book just on Angela Lansbury's diction in these three minutes.
4. "The Way We Were" - The Way We Were - 1973
Love songs dominate the category's past, perhaps indicative of the cliche that music expresses the biggest emotions in ways that mere words cannot. But this song also captures something else in its romance - a goodwill that erases the bad, a bruised distant affection, a willingness to submit to the afterglow. In a word: meeeeeemmmmoriesss...
3. "Last Dance" - Thank God It's Friday - 1978
The drama, the sex, the disco. "Last Dance" shows that part of the joy of Original Song can be not overthinking it (guilty) and further proof that a wholly deserving winner can still come from a bad movie. A perfect song on its own and a really goddamn cool winner still with its own straightforward crystalline longing.
2. "Moon River" - Breakfast at Tiffany's - 1961
You could easily accuse this one of being indicative of the santitation that befell the adaptation of Truman Capote's source novel, but then you'd also ignore how the song embodies its characters' search for something that can never be fulfilled in one another. The quintessential love-song-that-isn't-really and a stone cold classic still able to stir deep feeling.
1. "Over the Rainbow" - The Wizard of Oz - 1939
How can anything else compete? There's simply a distance between this song and all other winners wider than the space between Oz and Kansas. This song that famously almost landed on the cutting room floor went on to define one of show business's most iconic careers, serve as a metaphor for the LGBTQ movement, and touch every soul that longed for something more than what they were dealt. And help create a well of human pathos that fantasy films ever since have tried to emulate.
All Soundtracking installments can be found here! What are you favorite Original Song winners?