Not the Same Old Song

The Oscars’ best song category, usually a predictable collection of ballads from hit movies, has been known to raise an eyebrow from time to time.

To this day, no one can quite explain how “Ave Satani,” a hymn to the devil sung entirely in Latin in “The Omen,” got a best song nomination in 1977. “Ben,” a No. 1 hit for Michael Jackson in 1972, was an ode to a rat.

“Blazing Saddles,” nominated in 1975, was a sendup of traditional western tunes sung with complete seriousness by Frankie Laine. Novelty tunes like “Swingin’ on a Star” (“or would you rather be a mule?” from 1944’s “Going My Way”) and “High Hopes” (with the “rubber tree plant” lyric, from 1959’s “A Hole in the Head”) even won in their day.

This year’s most offbeat nominee, however, ups the ante considerably. “Blame Canada,” the satirical march from the animated feature “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” contains language that most newspapers deem unprintable.

“Blame Canada,” written by the film’s director and co-writer, Trey Parker, and his musical director, Marc Shaiman, is heard after the “South Park” tykes sneak into an R-rated movie starring their heroes: foulmouthed, juvenile Canadian TV personalities Terrance and Phillip. When the kids come home uttering all sorts of expletives, a concerned mothers’ group decides to shirk parental responsibility by pointing fingers at our neighbors to the north, using words like “fart,” “bitch” and a particularly vulgar four-letter one.

“It’s not the most outrageous song,” notes Parker, who admits to being stunned by the complexity and political realities of the nomination and voting process. “I was like, well, aren’t all of our songs up [for awards]?” Four-time nominee Shaiman explained the necessity of choosing a single tune to avoid a possible split vote. Fans were hoping for “Uncle F--ka,” the dirty ditty that Terrance and Phillip sing that launches the entire plot, but the song was never seriously considered.

Both think the nomination for “Blame Canada” is not so much for the song itself as it is an acknowledgment of the success of the entire movie. “It represents the whole score,” says Shaiman.

“That is the achievement, that we pulled off a musical that really works as a musical,” adds Parker.

The irony that “South Park” attacks the MPAA code, assorted celebrities (including Anne Murray, who is maligned in “Blame Canada”) and Hollywood itself, yet is being honored by the movie industry’s most prestigious organization, is not lost on Parker. “Obviously the academy members have a total sense of humor,” he says. “They get it. A lot of them enjoy this stuff. They can laugh at themselves just like anybody.”

While “Blame Canada” and its rude lyrics have been the most talked-about, this year’s best song crop is actually more diverse than in many years. Two songs are from animated Disney musicals: One is a lullaby, the other a paean to lost love. A third is a chart hit from a Meryl Streep movie, and a fourth is a plea for emotional rescue written by a folk-pop cult artist.

“I applaud the eclectic nature of this year’s nominations,” says film historian Leonard Maltin. “My gripe with the song category is that so many of the songs in recent years have either been shoehorned arbitrarily on the soundtrack for promotional, ancillary purposes, or they’ve been performed while people were racing up the aisle and turning over their ignitions in the parking lot, with little real connection to the movie.”

Oscar rules demand that the song be written specifically for the film and have both “creative substance and relevance to the dramatic whole.” Composer Charles Bernstein, a governor of the academy’s music branch, sees this year as “a perfect example of that principle at work. All five songs have a particular relationship to the dra matic content of the film.” Even within those guidelines, he adds, “there’s a lot of room for people to disagree about the quality of the [individual] song.”

Songwriters, seemingly without exception, agree with Oscar winners Marilyn and Alan Bergman (who won for their lyrics for “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “The Way We Were” and “Yentl”) about the nature of the job. Says Marilyn: “Ideally, from our point of view, and the academy’s point of view as well, the song should serve the movie.” Adds Alan: “And what happens outside of the movie is gravy.”

David Shire, who won in 1980 for the touching “It Goes Like It Goes” from “Norma Rae,” says “the song should feel like it’s part of the script in the sense that it’s organic to the movie. It really is a little bit of playwriting.” His song, he points out, “sets up the movie” with a first-person lyric (by Norman Gimbel) that seems to be Norma’s own conscience finding voice.

It may have been the last Oscar-winning tune that wasn’t commercially available either before or soon after the show. “No one would have been happier than me if ‘It Goes Like It Goes’ had sold a million records,” says Shire. “But if we had written that kind of song, I don’t think it would have been acceptable in the movie.”

Al Kasha, who with partner Joel Hirschhorn won Oscars for “The Morning After” and “We May Never Love Like This Again” (from the ‘70s Irwin Allen disaster films “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno”), quotes legendary songwriter Johnny Mercer as saying, “Never tell the story, but tell the philosophy of the picture.”

*

Every songwriter in Hollywood will tell you, “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” whether they believe it or not.

Randy Newman is up for the wistful “When She Loved Me,” which Sarah McLachlan sings at a pivotal point in Disney’s “Toy Story 2,” as cowgirl Jessie explains to Woody that all toys are eventually discarded by their owners. The combination of the visuals (Jessie’s flashback to happier times) and Newman’s song is, as Maltin says, “heartbreaking.”

The tune, says Newman, “was entirely inspired by what the animators did. It’s as emotional as they get with these [movies]. The scene as they shot it was very strong, irrespective of what I was to write. It’s already quite a step for an animated picture to take. I asked them, ‘Do you want it all out? Really do it?’ And they said, ‘Yeah,’ so I did.” This is Newman’s 13th nomination. His five previous nominated songs came from “Ragtime,” “Parenthood,” “The Paper,” “Toy Story” and “Babe: Pig in the City.” (He received original score nominations for “A Bug’s Life,” “Pleasantville,” “James and the Giant Peach, “Toy Story,” “Avalon,” “The Natural” and “Ragtime.”)

Phil Collins wrote five songs for Disney’s summer hit “Tarzan,” and his song for the ape Kala and the baby Tarzan, “You’ll Be in My Heart,” is nominated. Kala comforts the frightened, orphaned child in the African jungle with this tender lullaby. In its power-ballad version, it topped the adult contemporary charts for 10 consecutive weeks last summer.

In fact, says Collins, the tune was called simply “Lullaby” until Disney execs decided to retitle it. “I wrote it having sung that kind of song to my kids, especially my youngest,” Collins says. The song has already won a Golden Globe and a Grammy. Collins was previously nominated for songs for “Against All Odds” and “Buster.”

Diane Warren, widely regarded as the industry’s surest thing when it comes to making a movie song a hit record too, is nominated for the fifth time for “Music of My Heart,” the closing song of Wes Craven’s “Music of the Heart.” Meryl Streep (who is also nominated) plays a real-life Harlem violin teacher in the film.

“After reading the script,” says Warren, “I wanted to write a song that would be the kids’ way of thanking the teacher for the inspiration of what she’d done for them. She’d given them such a gift, opening them up to music.” She likened her approach to that of one of her favorite movie tunes of the ‘60s, “To Sir, With Love.”

As sung by ‘N Sync and Gloria Estefan, the song became one of the year’s biggest pop hits. This is Warren’s fourth consecutive nomination, following tunes from “Up Close and Personal,” “Con Air” and “Armageddon”; she was previously nominated for “Mannequin.”

First-time nominee Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” also arrives over the closing scenes of its film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s three-hour depression extravaganza “Magnolia.” Anderson wrote the script while immersed in the music of the singer-songwriter (whom one critic described as Kurt Cobain crossed with Emily Dickinson). A key line in the script, in fact (“Now that I’ve met you, would you object to never seeing me again?”), was borrowed from a Mann song.

“Save Me” was one of two originals she wrote for the film. Says Mann: “I think that everyone eventually gets to that state where they’re at such a total loss, and they want to believe in the dream that someone else can make them feel a different way permanently. They probably know that that dream is a dream, but it’s all they have. So they go ahead and believe in it. That’s sort of what the song’s about.”

*

When it comes to music, anybody with a radio or a CD player thinks he’s an expert. Every member of the academy gets to vote for best song, which helps to explain why the winners are often (a) from animated musicals, (b) big chart hits or (c) written, performed, or both, by a familiar name.

Best song winners of the past 10 years all fit one or more of those criteria. Five have been from Disney films (“Pocahontas,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid”). One was from a DreamWorks animated film (“The Prince of Egypt”). Three have been from “name” songwriters (Andrew Lloyd Webber for “Evita,” Bruce Springsteen for “Philadelphia,” Stephen Sondheim for “Dick Tracy”). And one was sung by Celine Dion in the biggest movie hit of all time (“Titanic”).

So what gets nominated? Marilyn Bergman contends: “Sometimes they’re the songs that are big hits. Sometimes they’re the songs that are from big hit movies. Sometimes they are the songs that just happen to capture the imagination and the affection of the voters. Sometimes it’s the result of a very intensive campaign.”

And what wins? Suggests Alan Bergman: “In the last few years, it’s been songs that have their basis in a dramatic context, like the songs from the Disney animated movies.” According to Oscar winner Fred Karlin (“For All We Know”), “the big ballad” tends to win. “There are often surprising novelties and rhythmically oriented songs that are nominated with absolutely no chance of winning,” he points out.

Notes Randy Newman: “Whether I win or lose, or have won or lost, it isn’t indicative of merit. But it is what it is. It’s very important to people around the world. For that one night, it’s a big deal. Whether you care or you don’t care, it’s too rude not to,” he says with a laugh.

As for “Blame Canada,” Parker thinks his chances of winning are “really nil. We don’t have a shot in hell.” In fact, he says, “I’ll be upset if we win.”

Marilyn Bergman puts it all in perspective. “Nobody remembers what won and what didn’t win,” she says. “The song either gets into the bloodstream and sticks around, or it doesn’t. I think people think ‘What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life’ won an Academy Award. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t, really. The song found its way.”