By Frank “Smokin” Truatt
The Golden Globe Awards are over, and once again, the music category has left a lot to be desired. As a matter of fact, the choice this year of great movie songs was, at the least, disappointing. The award for best original song is presented to the songwriter and not the performer unless that artist also helped write the song. Of the six nominees this year, the movie “Barbie” was nominated for three.
Considering that the movie is not a movie about music, the creators of the soundtrack did an amazing job of picking their songs. Of course, it could be that all the other movies dropped the ball this time. By the way, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell got this year’s award for a song called “What was I Made For?” It sort of makes you yearn for the old days when the winners were songs that became big hits on the radio. Odds are that you will know all the songs winning for many years in a row starting in 1975 when “I’m Easy” by Keith Carradine came out on top. 1976 gave us “Evergreen” from “A Star is Born” with Barbra Streisand. The biggest charting song of the 1970’s won in 1977 from the movie of the same name, “You Light Up My Life.” The next couple of years in order gave us “Thank God It’s Friday,” “The Rose,” “Fame,” “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do,” “Up Where We Belong,” “Flashdance… What a Feeling,” “I Just Called to Say I Love You” and in 1986 “Take My Breath Away.” Year after year, the songs that won were pop hits heard daily on the radio as were most of the nominees. The very next year, 1987, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” was the winner. That’s quite a run of popular songs and in most cases when we hear them, we can picture the scene in the movie when it plays.
It is a bit silly that the performer is not acknowledged for the win, because I believe that the way a song is sung is a determining factor as to its eventual popularity. A great song is also a way that a movie that could never win a top award can get a piece of the action. Hopefully, next year some great tunes will hit the movies. If not, we’ll just have to wait for “Barbie 2.”
