Last year's Academy Award considerations for Best Original Song featured some fairly scandalous going-ons, although you wouldn't know it from reading about the Oscars. Either way, nominee "Along Yet Not Alone" from the film of the same name was disqualified from contention because the songwriter had used his influence inappropriately when pushing for support from Academy voters.
Bruce Broughton was the songwriter, and he happened to have served as head of the Academy music branch previously. It becomes more problematic when he's still a member of the branch's executive committee and starts sending out e-mails reminding fellow committee members (and Oscar voters) to check out the track he wrote for Alone Yet Not Alone. It's, in essence, peer pressuring your coworkers into voting you "employee of the month" (something we have quite a bit of experience with). So Broughton wasn't exactly giving out free tote bags (not that nominees for other awards would do that...ahem...Emmys) to gather votes, but he was being less than ethical in his approach.
The Academy Awards took last year's snafu into consideration and drafted a set of guidelines for voters to ensure that nobody can claim corruption. Most of the rules are pretty obvious: Don't promote your song to voters and committee members via phone, e-mail, social media, et cetera. Some may cause more problems, such as the rule forbidding voters from attending live performances of the song unless its affiliated with a film screening that features a question-and-answer session afterwards. So if you, a voter, went to a Pharrell Williams concert between the time of nominations and the ceremony, and he performed "Happy" (and you KNOW he did), then you're screwed.
It's tough to blame Broughton for his actions however. "Let It Go" by Idina Menzel was almost guaranteed last year's trophy regardless of how many downloads "Happy" sold. A songwriter's gotta do what a songwriter's gotta do.
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