It's interesting how much emphasis gets placed on Best Original Song as an Oscars category, considering that whole purpose of the Academy Awards is to honor film and popular music gets its own showcase at The Grammys. Still, it's tough to deny the impact of a good song crafted for a great film, even outside of the realm of Disney.
Film has managed to breach into the world of music however, and has been doing so since the early '80s: The music video. All of the nominees for this year's Best Original Song have gotten one, so we decided to put each to the cinematic test, ranking the songs not on the basis of audio quality (which we've already done) but rather on how well it sold itself as a visual.
05) "Grateful" by Rita Ora (from Beyond The Lights)
First of all, we admit that comparing music videos between Best Original Song nominees is not necessarily fair. Some films simply have budgets so much higher that they can afford to produce higher level music videos than others, and some can pay the stars behind the hits songs to come and appear in said music videos. We can't say for sure, but the folks behind Beyond The Lights didn't seem to keen on getting Rita Ora to come back for the video version of the song "Grateful," written by Diane Warren. All that needed up getting produced was a lyrics video, which is alright, but it honestly looks like a fan video. The producers couldn't even figure out how to take clips from the film to run behind the lyrics, opting to just take screenshots. The final effect is just a glorified screensaver of Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker being cute/preventing suicides. Spoiler alert?
04) "Lost Stars" by Adam Levine (from Begin Again)
The studio behind Lost Stars also opted for a lyric video but they had one thing working to their advantage: Maroon 5 frontman and "Lost Stars" singer Adam Levine was also one of the lead actors in the film itself. So displaying the lyrics to the track while showing scenes of the performer and Keira Knightly almost made it seem as if it was all original footage (at least if you haven't seen the film before). Of course there's an entire scene where Levine's character (a successful musician himself) plays the entirety of the track, from front to back, to a crowded concert hall. There's also a music video version of this scene available of Vevo but we opted for the lyrics video since it at least showed some creativity in cutting the film up.
03) "Glory" by John Legend and Common (from Selma)
Selma and "Glory" go to show how well simply taking clips from a film and running them alongside a song can make for a good film song music video. The scenes of marchers and of police violence against them is the point of "Glory," and is the point of the film as well. We're not really sure what else Common (who stars in the movie as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's James Bevel) and John Legend could do to make this video much better. If anything, too much camera time is given to Common as he stands on a stage and delivers his verses in an empty auditorium along with Legend. If anything, this video should have brought in more talent if they wanted to do cut scenes with the song's stars, such as providing a gospel choir show where the backing choruses of "glory" are actually coming from.
02) "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" by Glen Campbell (from I'll Be Me)
We're admittedly going to backtrack on our earlier comments when placing "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" ahead of "Glory" (Common and Legend can take solace that they'll almost certainly win the actual Grammy this weekend). Although the video for "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" doesn't actually incorporate any new footage, the context of that footage within the song has such a heartbreaking effect that it fully justifies its use: Campbell sang the title track as an accompaniment to the documentary on his life and last tour, knowing that Alzheimer's would soon claim what was left of his memory. The footage of the country music legend performing with his children and enjoying his time with his wife makes it soul-crushing to know that hen in the present, no longer remembers them. All of the new footage from the film was gathered during 2013, and the idea of using Campbell in new footage for a music video was out of the question of course, so we'll give them a pass.
01) "Everything Is Awesome" by Tegan and Sara / The Lonely Island (from The LEGO Movie)
The team behind the music video for "Everything Is Awesome" had an unfair advantage from the get-go: It's from a movie...about Legos. The obvious, and not any less awesome as a result, concept for the music video was to shoot the entire thing in Lego, which they of course did. No, Tegan and Sara and their co-conspirators The Lonely Island don't show up...unless you count the Lego version of themselves. We're not sure if we believe the opening title sequence that claims the entire clip was directed by a six year-old, although it may be believable that the ledes themselves and their "dancing" while attached to pencils was handled by Mr. Markus Jolly. Shots of the film are interspersed with actual stop-motion sequences of breakdancing AT-STs, crocodile chases, and of course the title to the song being built brick by colorful brick. This single might not take home the trophy come Sunday but it's video deserves one. Made of Duplos, of course.
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