Are The Oscars Stone Cold Deaf? #2: 1985

elcome to the feature on this blog I like to call "Are The Oscars Stone Cold Deaf?" This is a feature that is dedicated to one of the most highly publicized awards in the Oscar season that is (for some reason) still underrated. This may have more to do with the fact that the Best Song category is the reason we still have dance numbers in the Oscar telecast (and people hate those dance numbers), but it doesn't change the fact that there are many great songs that get nominated for Best Song that never win. Sometimes the winners are either of lesser quality, not nearly as good, or so inferior to a fellow nominee that you just have wonder if the Oscars are just stone cold deaf. For our second installment we're going to look at the year 1985 (again, where the winner was not a total loss). Here's what won:

Now I love Lionel Richie as much as the next guy, but good as that song is its sort of a lightweight to honor it with a "Best Song" Oscar.  Another song that would have been a slightly better choice is this one...

...which ironically comes from the same movie.  "White Nights."  Now these are both good songs.  I'm not disputing that.  However, there was a song nominated here that was so catchy, so memorable, that it took the world by storm and hasn't left since.  And that is...

..."The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News.  From the classic film "Back To The Future," this is what good memorable music is.  It's become not only an iconic movie song, but an iconic song in general that is still played on the radio as if it were brand new to this very day.  In this case, I think Oscar really blew it.

Are The Oscars Stone Cold Deaf? #1: 1968

Welcome to a new feature on this blog called "Are The Oscars Stone Cold Deaf?" This is a feature that is dedicated to one of the most highly publicized awards in the Oscar season that is (for some reason) still underrated. This may have more to do with the fact that the Best Song category is the reason we still have dance numbers in the Oscar telecast (and people hate those dance numbers), but it doesn't change the fact that there are many great songs that get nominated for Best Song that never win. Sometimes the winners are either of lesser quality, not nearly as good, or so inferior to a fellow nominee that you just have wonder if the Oscars are just stone cold deaf. For our first installment we're going to look at the year 1968 (where the winner was not a total loss). Here's what won:

"Born Free" by Matt Monro (from "Born Free")

Not too bad. It has a nice (if unspectacular) sound to it. But chances are if you are a movie and music buff then you haven't heard that song. Nope, if your of the more casual type chances are you've heard this classic tune:

"What's It All About? (Alfie)" by Cher (from "Alfie")

Which is the song that should have won in the first place. In the second case the song had a more memorable memory, great vocals, and considering what the movie "Alfie" was all about made the song that much more poetic when the film ended and you had to reflect on the film with the words of this song. A good second choice (if not similarly unspectacular) would be this song from "Georgy Girl:"

"Georgy Girl" by The Seekers (from "Georgy Girl")

Yeah it's not as deep, but it sure was a lot of fun.