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Academy Award for Best Original Song

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The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

The award goes to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film. Hence it is the writers who win, not the song (there is no such thing as an "Oscar-winning song"). Similarly, the performers of a song cannot win the Academy Award unless they contributed either to music, lyrics or both in their own right.

The award category was introduced at the 7th Academy Awards, the ceremony honoring the best in film for 1934. Nominations are currently made by Academy members who are songwriters and composers, and the winners are chosen by the Academy membership as a whole.

The Original requirement

Only songs that are "original and written specifically for the film" are eligible to win. Songs that were published prior to a film's production having nothing to do with the film, such as "Unchained Melody" in the 1990 film Ghost and "I Will Always Love You" in the 1992 film The Bodyguard, cannot qualify. In addition, songs that rely on sampled or reworked material, such as "Gangstas Paradise" in the 1995 film Dangerous Minds and "Keep Holding On" in the 2006 film Eragon, are also ineligible.

When a film is adapted from a previously-written stage musical, all of the songs from the stage version of the musical (and other sources) are ineligible. As a result, most recent film adaptations of stage musicals have included original songs in order to be nominated, such as "You Must Love Me" in the 1996 film Evita, and "Listen", "Love You I Do" and "Patience" in the 2006 film Dreamgirls.

There was a debate as to whether or not Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who were awarded the Oscar in 2008 for "Falling Slowly", were in fact eligible. "Falling Slowly" has been released on two other albums - The Swell Season, Hansard's solo debut, and The Cost, by Hansard's band The Frames. The Swell Season was released in August 2006, and The Cost in February 2007, before the release of Once. However, the AMPAS music committee determined that, in the course of the film's protracted production, the composers had "played the song in some venues that were deemed inconsequential enough to not change the song’s eligibility". The same issue arose two years earlier with "In the Deep" from Crash, which appeared on Kathleen "Bird" York's 2003 album The Velvet Hour after being written for Crash, but before the film was released.

Performances at the awards ceremony

In recent years, the nominated songs are usually performed live at the Academy Awards ceremonies. Because the ceremonies are seen by a worldwide audience, it provides valuable exposure for performers looking to boost their careers

In general, the person or group who performed the nominated songs in the films appear at the awards ceremonies. However in certain cases, the Academy instead picks well-recognized performers to boost the show's ratings. For example, singer/actress Beyoncé Knowles sang three nominated songs during the 77th Academy Awards even though she didn't perform all these songs in the respective nominated film. For the 80th Academy Awards, "That's How You Know" was performed by Kristin Chenoweth, rather than Amy Adams who performed it in Enchanted; Adams performed The "Happy Working Song" from the same film.

Conversely, a number of well-known solo artistes and groups such as Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, and members of Three 6 Mafia who served as songwriters for winning songs do in fact end up both performing on stage and making an acceptance speech for the award later on.

The 2008 ceremony was a stripped-down affair, with little in the way of live performance. This was a consequence of the hurried nature of the organisation following the recent resolution of the writers' strike, which had placed the whole ceremony in jeopardy until the eleventh hour.

List of winners and nominees

1934 - 1940

1941 - 1950

1951 - 1960

1961 - 1970

1971 - 1980

1981 - 1990