The Academy Award nominees were announced last week and it looks like it was a bit of a down year for movie music since only two songs were even nominated. No matter, this week we celebrate Best Song winners from past years.

Elton Britt “Sweet Leilani” (Bing Crosby, 1937)
The original version of this song was string-drenched and only vaguely Hawaiian. Since then there has been no shortage of covers done in a more “native” style with lots of lap steel and/or slack key guitars. But for some reason Elton Britt decided that this song was the perfect candidate for a singing cowboy remake complete with yodeling. Because nothing evokes the South Pacific for me quite like yodeling.

Gene Simmons “When You Wish Upon A Star” (Cliff Edwards, 1940)
It must have been the late 70s when the members of KISS all decided to make solo records. But since they were savvy businessmen and knew deep down in their hearts that nobody gave a crap about them as individual musicians, the albums were released as a sort of matched set. The covers all had the same design, and each record came with a poster honoring the kabuki-painted mope that created it. If you collected all four records you could put them all together into one huge super-awsome poster, sort of like the Power Rangers.

It must have been the early 80s when I found Gene Simmons’ solo record rotting in a cutout bin at my local record store. It only cost a buck or two so I picked it up. I was disappointed when I discovered that my copy did not include a poster, but that disappointment faded away when I heard this song. I don’t know who told Mr. Simmons that covering this song would be a good idea, but I hope he was taken out and shot afterward. Mr. Tongue’s attempts to hit the high notes in this one never fail to make me howl with laughter.

The Utopians “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing” (The Four Aces, 1955)
This song comes from an album called Down To GREASE On Holiday which had alternative takes on music from the musical Grease along with a few other songs actually from the 1950s. There’s a pretty straight cover somewhere in there underneath all the layers of odd sound effects and synthesizers.

Mrs. Miller “Chim-Chim-Cher-ee (Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews, 1964)
Long before Wing was being immortalized on South Park, there was Mrs. Miller. She had a horrible pseudo-operatic “style” of singing and no sense of rhythm or melody. She was so bad that she became a minor celebrity, appearing on the Tonight Show for Johnny Carson to laugh at. I think she finally figured out that she was being ridiculed and quit show business. And all of our lives became a little more dreary.

Doping Panda “Under the Sea” (Samuel E. Wright, 1989)
This song marked the beginning of Disney’s decade-long domination of the Best Song award. One could argue that consistently winning speaks to Disney’s mastery of the use of music in film. But considering how many times two or three songs from the same Disney movie were nominated, I’d suspect different reasons. Bribery is a possibility but I don’t think it’s anything so dramatic. I just don’t think that there’s much original music being written for film these days outside of animation. Maybe there should be a new award for best use of music in a film. Then Quentin Tarantino would get an Oscar for every movie he made.