Over the last five months, Gerard has diligently canvassed and re-canvassed the various crafts categories here at In Contention. The one category we have held back on all this time, as contenders have slowly fallen into place, was Best Original Song. Today, it’s time to dig into the field.
This has turned into something of a banner year for original songs in feature films. We’ve had the great pleasure of bringing a number of hopefuls to you via our “listen to” posts, and look forward to continuing that into the new year. But inevitably, frontrunners are bound to show up, and I think we can successfully narrow the field now.
Before diving in, it’s worth reiterating the voting process in this category. I’ll simply let the Academy’s rule book speak for itself:
“An original song consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture. There must be a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition (not necessarily visually presented) of both lyric and melody, used in the body of the motion picture or as the first music cue in the end credits.
Last month we broke the