Soundtracking: The Oscar Performances

by Chris Feil

Isn’t it lovely that full performances of the Original Song nominees are here to stay? Well, hopefully here to stay. We’re not far enough removed from the Oscar telecast cruelly jettisoning less known tracks from the evening’s performances to breathe easy when we get to delight in each of the nominees. Off years or no, past omissions have been a decidedly bad look.

And the performances largely kept their spectacle simple and straightforward, providing some nice grand emotion in an otherwise mostly even keel evening. In one of the few upset's of the night Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez got their second Oscar for Coco's "Remember Me" (my favorite of the nominees). Coco’s triumph was so richly deserved particularly for how inextricable it is from the film’s narrative, criteria that the songwriting branch has famously demanded of late. But the telecast allowed for some reassessment of the nominated lineup...

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Soundtracking: The Best Oscar Winning Original Songs

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...

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Soundtracking: "All That Jazz"

by Chris Feil

These days we don’t get many musicals brave enough to buck genre comforts and form as Bob Fosse’s autobiographical All That Jazz. The director/choreographer transplants himself onto Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), a highly regarded and sexually cruel master of the stage on his way to untimely demise. It’s a masterpiece to shame other masterpieces.

There’s a reason that the film isn’t remembered for its songs - musical pleasantry is low on his priorities, as the film is an uncompromising character study of the visionary creator’s weakest impulses...

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Soundtracking: "Harold and Maude"

by Chris Feil

Some of our greatest cinematic love stories are more than the coupling at the center. As in life, the love can be more deeply felt when both sides of the arrangement have had their own separate journeys that inform and are informed by their relationship. Conflicting personal priorities, emotional walls dismantled, allowing oneself to accept being loved - it’s the personal obstacles that allow us to get swept up in the romance. One of the (cult) classics of this kind of love story is Hal Ashby’s delicate Harold and Maude, with Harold’s emotional arc towards self-acceptance all underscored with the musical stylings of a Cat Stevens soundtrack.

Would that all of our romantic foibles and internal battles could sound as lovely as this...

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Soundtracking: "Pretty Woman"

by Chris Feil

Decades later, it’s still easy to fall for the charms of Pretty Woman - despite maybe being a problematic fave for how it softens the struggles of sex workers. That feel-good fantasy is aided by a pleasing adult-contempo soundtrack, and one that half-comments on the situation as it charms us. It’s a modern variation on the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady archetype and packed with musical moments, so it makes sense that it is on its way to a stage musical treatment. Go West’s “King of Wishful Thinking” makes for a buoyant opening number of wishful love to start our hearts fluttering, before fading into equally crowd-pleasing tracks that dance around the love story’s circumstance.

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