Every year when the Oscar nominees for Best Original Song are released, there’s inevitably a secondary question that remains to answered: which of the nominees will be performing their songs during the ceremony? You’d think it would be a given that the artist would be invited to do so, but that hasn’t always been the case. (Just ask Phil Collins.)
In this case, however, it’s going to be a clean sweep: all five songs will be performed by the artists who originally recorded them...and if you need a quick refresher on that full list, well, we can provide that.
- Jon Batiste will perform "It Never Went Away" from American Symphony
- Billie Eilish and her brother/cowriter Finneas O'Connell will perform "What Was I Made For?" from Barbie
- Ryan Gosling will – with assistance from Mark Ronson, who co-wrote the song with Andrew Wyatt – perform “I’m Just Ken,” also from Barbie
- Becky G will perform “The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot
- Scott George and the Osage Singers will perform “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon
Future Oscar performer Ryan Gosling, alongside the new Gosling-inspired Ken doll.
Eilish was long considered one of the favorites in the category, having also won the Golden Globe. This is now the second time that she and her brother have been nominated in this category, having secured an Oscar for composing the James Bond theme "No Time to Die" in 2022. Ronson and Wyatt both shared an Oscar in 2019 for co-writing "Shallow" for A Star is Born, along with Lady Gaga and Anthony Rossomando, founding member of Dirty Pretty Things, while Batiste won his own Oscar in 2020 for his score for the Pixar film Soul.
As for the other nominees, Scott George has never been up for an Oscar before, but the same absolutely cannot be said for the writer of "The Fire Inside." That song was penned by 15-time Oscar nominee Diane Warren, who has yet to actually win on any of those occasions. (She did, however, receive an honorary Oscar in 2022, which - as any honorary Oscar recipient will likely tell you - is in no way the same thing as actually winning one.)
But, of course, when it comes to movie music, the Oscars aren't just about original songs, they're also about original scores.
With his Best Original Score nomination for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, the late Band frontman Robbie Robertson becomes the first composer to be posthumously nominated in the category since film music great Bernard Herrmann, who was nominated for both Taxi Driver and Obsession in 1976. (The last time a composer actually won the award posthumously was 1972, when Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell won for the belatedly released 1952 Charlie Chaplin film Limelight.)
John Williams will have a chance to win his sixth Oscar for his score to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. He already held the record for the most nominations, which now increases to 54.
The full nominations for Best Original Score are below:
Ludwig Göransson — Oppenheimer
Robbie Robertson — Killers of the Flower Moon
Laura Karpman — American Fiction
Jerskin Fendrix — Poor Things
John Williams — Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
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