Songs are a many-splendored thing in motion pictures. They book-end stories, serving as overture and coda, preparing canvases for directors and offering the audience a sense of ceremony as it enters and departs from the world of a film. The best original songs pull on us with lyrical hooks toward what really matters in a scene, distilling the film’s essence. To celebrate this legacy, the Houston Symphony presents The Oscars: Best Original Songs just in time for this year’s awards ceremony.
Since 1934, the Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences has issued recognition and gold statuettes for original songs in movies, “written specifically for the motion picture…the result of a creative interaction between the filmmaker(s) and the composer(s) and/or songwriter(s)…”
Nearly from the award’s inception, directors and producers trained their sights on its prestige. The history of the James Bond film franchise exhibits a particularly serious case of Best Original Song Oscar Fever. Though Paul McCartney secured a nomination in 1974, it took Adele to win the franchise its first song Oscar with “Skyfall” in 2013. The franchise won a second Best Song Oscar with “Writing’s on the Wall” by Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes from the 2015 film Spectre. According to Smith, he and Napes were particularly inspired when they composed it, taking less than 30 minutes to write it down before creating a demo.
Another heavy hitter, the Walt Disney Company built a whole new world of original film songs during the company’s second golden age in the 1990s. With collaborators like composer Alan Menken, Disney won the category seven times over the course of the decade with songs like the beloved ballad “Tale as Old as Time” from Beauty and the Beast. More recently, “Let it Go” from Frozen won the category in 2013 and is still all the rage with would-be princesses.
Sometimes, however, serendipity is responsible for an Oscar-winning song. Paramount Pictures executive Martin Rackin pointedly suggested cutting “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) following a preliminary screening, though Audrey Hepburn’s protests saved it. Tailored to Hepburn’s soft voice with a range barely wider than an octave, the song initially cost composer Henry Mancini some trouble; he took one month to write the first three notes and half an hour for the rest.
These are just a few of the hits of the silver screen audiences can look forward to at The Oscars: Best Original Songs. Join conductor Steven Reineke and vocalists Ashley Brown and Hugh Panaro March 1, 2 and 3 for the songs that inspired filmmakers—and us.
—Brian Glass, Marketing Coordinator and Cinephile
Don’t miss these and other hits of the silver screen at The Oscars: Best Original Songs March 1, 2 & 3. Get tickets and more information at houstonsymphony.org.
