Ranking All 80 Winners of Best Original Song (Plus Where This Year's Contenders Would Place)

Glenn here with a look at everybody’s favourite category – best original song! Okay, so, sure, even if this year’s roster for best original song doesn’t look like a vintage one for the category, there’s actually some fun to be had when you consider who will win.

• Will Diane Warren finally win an Oscar on her eighth nomination? And how strange will it be to see her win for a song from a documentary about sexual abuse alongside Lady Gaga rather than one of the chart-busting hit-singles that her first six nominations were for (lest we forget, Beyond the Lights’ “Grateful” didn’t chart because, well, Rita Ora).

• Will an opera tune win for the first time? No work of opera has ever been nominated if my research is correct, which is kinda neat even though I think the song is dirge (albeit appropriately so for the film).

• Will all the talk of diversity in cinema this year give us a winner that is either black (The Weeknd), transgender (Antony Hegarty), or gay (Sam Smith)?

• It’s been 18 years since the last occurrence of a movie winning both a Razzie and an Oscar. Plenty of films have been nominated for both of the awards, but neither has won an award from each since Wall Street in 1988. Could Fifty Shades of Grey break a very unique drought?

Now, naturally because we all love lists so I thought it would be fun to rank every winner of Oscar’s best original song category and see where this year’s contenders would fit in when they take home that golden statue. What could possible go wrong with a completely subjective ranking of over 80 songs?!? Oh dear. You’ve been warned, I guess. Two things to note: I have not included "The Last Time I Saw Paris" from Lady Be Good since even the writer of that 1941 song was angry it was given an award when it wasn't written for the movie (it was subsequently the impetus for the category's rule change). Secondly, I have tried to rank as close to original film versions as possible so some songs that were improved upon in later recordings (like Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa”) may not rank as high. And, yes, before you ask, I am the person that hates Mary Poppins and who has never seen much of the appeal of the overtly twee “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”.

Go over the rainbow after the jump...

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Links

Your Evening LOL
Elite Daily "A Letter From The Oscar Board On Why Carol Was Totally Snubbed"

Link Love
This Had Oscar Buzz Joe Reid's hilarious tumblr of lost (on-paper) dreams
MNPP Pic of the Day Tom Hiddleston welcomes you to High-Rise... without pants
Coming Soon Steve Coogan and John C Reilly will headline the upcoming biopic Stan & Ollie about the movie comedy duo Laurel & Hardy - any guesses as to who pretends to be supporting for the Oscar campaign?
CHUD on the major changes from book to screen for The Revenant (obviously spoilers) including its completely different ending

Twitter Assassins Creed starring Michael Fassbender is a wrap. It's still nearly a year from theaters though (Dec 21st) 
Variety Anne Hathaway to headline the sci-fi comedy The Shower which is being described as 'a cross between Attack the Block and Bridesmaids.' Hmmm
Variety apparently Connie Nielsen has replaced Nicole Kidman as the Queen of the Amazons for Wonder Woman. (Is this really Connie Nielsen in the photo? She looks nothing like her old self) 
Salon Glenn Frey, lead singer of The Eagles, has died at 67. 2016 is not letting up.
The Guardian David Lang, Oscar nominated for his Youth song "Simple Song No. 3" talks about musicians he loves from Adele to Shostakovich   

#OscarsSoControversial
Stereogum because no Oscar year is complete without a Best Original Song controversy now there's online hubbub that Lady Gaga only contributed a few words to tbe Diane Warren song that won her an Oscar nomination "Til It Happens To You"
The Gold Standard is rooting for The Big Short's political aisle crossing to take home the Oscar -- I am stunned to hear that they're recommending it on Fox News since Repubs are so anti-regulation and the movie shows how important regulations are at preventing horrific abuses of the system. Did they misunderstand the message of the movie?  
Will Packer (Executive Producer of Straight Outta Compton) slams the Oscars on facebook 
Spike Lee boycotting the Oscars over the lack of black actors nominated 
Variety John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) isn't upset about it, citing that time will sort things out as it did with Oscar snubs Do The Right Thing and Singin' in the Rain, telling Variety:

It’s like every year people complain. People even complain even when we have a lot of nominations. It is what it is. I’ve been in the game for 25 years. You never know — it’s the luck of the draw for you. To me, I’m not surprised. I’m not disappointed either, as much as other people are disappointed.

...I know there are other works that will be recognized by a more diverse Academy and I know there will be other years when work that is really deserving doesn’t get recognized.

 That last sentence is the truest sentence ever spoken about the always volatile Oscars -- unlike the Emmys they have an entirely new crop of work to judge each year. Sometimes they make good calls. Other times...  

Golden Globe Winners: That Damn Bear Movie and the Martian Surge.

Technical issues with my TV and my phone and my computer tonight?  -- someone did some voodoo on TFE for the booziest Hollywood party this year! They suck but their timing is pure evil genius so we bow down. Obviously there will be a bit more Globes tomorrow but for tonight, a quick list of winners, super brief thoughts and amusing tweets after the jump...

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74 Songs Eligible for "Best Original Song"

Will LADY GAGA return to Oscar's stage? You know we always kind of thought that Brian Wilson song from Love & Mercy wasn't going to be eligible. It seemed like it had been written before the movie and not for the movie. It's not on the Oscar longlist this year but 74 other songs from the movies are.

Some of the tunes are from obscure movies we haven't even heard of (such is always the case with this category) some are from Bollywood pictures which got stateside release. And a couple of handfuls of songs from Oscar contenders in other categories such as Anomalisa, Cinderella, Shaun the Sheep Movie and Youth are also in the mix.

Lady Gaga, who performed a medley from The Sound of Music last time she was on Oscar's stage, might be back as a nominee if they love her song from the documentary The Hunting Ground . She's not the only famous singer who could grace the stage. Songs written and/or sung by Eminem (already an Oscar winner), Miley Cyrus, Jessie J, Sam Smith, Ellie Goulding, and Rihanna are also possible contenders. Famous actors that sang their movie's eligible songs onscreen this year include Amanda Seyfried (Ted 2), Meryl Streep (Ricki and the Flash), Tessa Thompson (Creed), and Al Pacino (Danny Collins) though they're far less likely to repeat the trick onstage should those songs be nominated since actors rarely do that on the Oscar stage unless they started as musicians.

The complete list (with any embeddable videos we could find) is after the jump...

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Grammy's Film/TV Related Categories

The Grammy Awards were announced today with Kendrick Lamar (11 nominations), Taylor Swift and The Weeknd (7 nominations each) leading the nominee pack. But here at The Film Experience we're only really concerned with the visual categories.

I'm not including Grammy's Spoken Word category as I am sometimes prone to do because there aren't actors involved this year beyond Amy Poehler who is nominated for the audiobook of her "Yes Please" memoir. But don't get too excited about her nomination. The brilliant Poehler seems to be a statue repellent; she's not anywhere close to an EGOT since she's never even won a damn Emmy despite years of TV brilliance.

Here are the nominees in the film/tv related categories...

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