Now you gotta send the flood to drown it out.Okri wrote:Had I known "This is Me" wouldn't win, I probably wouldn't have listened to it. What an earworm of a song.
Yeah, I know. Bad joke. But I got no apologies...THIS IS ME!
Now you gotta send the flood to drown it out.Okri wrote:Had I known "This is Me" wouldn't win, I probably wouldn't have listened to it. What an earworm of a song.
That would be O.K., but it would fit an entirely different scenario.criddic3 wrote:How about liking La La Land because it was good?
My goodness. I said it was a comparison that I had similar trouble wrapping my head around. I didn't accuse any of you of being Trump supporters for having "Never Enough" on loop on Spotify. Just take a deep breath, I'm not trying to start anything here.OscarGuy wrote:You should really apologize to the rest of us for suggesting that our preference of Greatest Showman to La La Land is any way equivalent to support of Trump.
It's also really just worth reiterating that "Till It Happens To You" isn't exactly that great of a song either -- it's not like it was a Lady Gaga chart-topper that had huge cultural impact. In fact, most of what seemed to make it such a front-runner was pure narrative -- Gaga was everywhere that awards season, winning a Globe for American Horror Story, performing this song at the PGA Awards, doing the David Bowie tribute at the Grammys, headlining the Super Bowl. Most pundits seemed to think Oscar was just the next stop on her tour -- for a song that even carried with it some controversy about how little she actually wrote of it -- but on its face the song was a pretty weak candidate.Mister Tee wrote:During the run-up to that Oscar presentation, it was easy to forget that Till It Happens to You came from a documentary that no one saw and most had never even heard of (right now, I can't even remember the name).
It was a pretty terrible movie, but, relative to its budget -- and largely thanks to the continuing Saturday Night Fever/disco craze -- something of a hit, and the song was a top-five charter for disco queen Donna Summer. It's not the strongest example of the era, but not in Till It Happens to You territory.Greg wrote:Just a few years earlier "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday won.Mister Tee wrote:The only song from a true flop movie I can recall over those years was I Just Called to Say I Love You...but there, you had a genuine luminary in Stevie Wonder, and a song that had got to number one on the charts.
Just a few years earlier "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday won.Mister Tee wrote:The only song from a true flop movie I can recall over those years was I Just Called to Say I Love You...but there, you had a genuine luminary in Stevie Wonder, and a song that had got to number one on the charts.
...and they pretty much all won.Mister Tee wrote
On BJ's warning, I've stayed away from The Greatest Showman, but I watched what was available of This Is Me on YouTube, and...I don't know what some of you are hearing. I think both of this songwriting team's songs from last year were infinitely superior to this effort. This Is Me reminds me of those Disney cartoon power ballads, all of which are utterly bland/hard to distinguish from one another, and all seem like they could double as gay coming-out anthems.
Actually, I'd argue that the broader context DOES matter, but that broader context isn't how hyped the song is, or in what ways it speaks to the zeitgeist, but the far simpler matter of Did people see/like the film from which it came? During the run-up to that Oscar presentation, it was easy to forget that Till It Happens to You came from a documentary that no one saw and most had never even heard of (right now, I can't even remember the name). And that has, historically, mattered in this category. I remember, many years ago, 1972, most of us thought that Ben -- a minor hit for not-quite-yet-superstar Michael Jackson -- would be the default winner, despite it coming from a lightly-attended horror film (sequel to the bigger hit Willard). But The Morning After triumphed instead, presumably because it was from the widely-seen and much-nominated The Poseidon Adventure. Over the decades since, it's been very hard for even a highly-regarded song to win unless it came from a film that voters saw. I'm not saying the film has to be a full-on blockbuster, but it has to be at least part of the conversation -- Once, for instance, wasn't a top earner, but its huge push from critics helped Falling Slowly pull out a win. The only song from a true flop movie I can recall over those years was I Just Called to Say I Love You...but there, you had a genuine luminary in Stevie Wonder, and a song that had got to number one on the charts. Gaga's song had nothing like that going for it; in retrospect, it seemed logical for a song from a $200 million domestic grosser to top it.MaxWilder wrote:I'll never forget the Best Original Song debacle two years ago. Lady Gaga performs "Til It Happens to You" and everyone watching is transfixed. It's a powerful moment. Of course she'll win. Then the presenters come out and the Oscar goes to that Sam Smith abortion from Spectre. (He then has the balls to claims he's the first openly gay man to win an Oscar.) If that can happen, clearly the broader context/moment has no influence on voting.
Other than the usually completely up-in-the-air Foreign Film, Documentary, and Short Subject categories, I think Original Screenplay is the most up-in-the-air category this year.The Original BJ wrote:This may well be the most thoroughly up-in-the-air category of them all this year -- I could see this prize going in just about any direction.
I have a theory that when an Original Song nominee is the only nomination for a film, that the film itself has little impact on whether the song wins; because, many voting members decide there is no need to watch the screener of the movie, that it sufficient to vote after only listening to the song on YouTube.The Original BJ wrote:"This Is Me" has become the self-empowerment anthem of what has become a surprisingly (and to me, unfathomably) successful hit film. . . On the con side. . . the film is truly terrible. . .