Episode 42: Your Laugh Turned On the Sun
Listen now
Description
The list of five songs nominated for the 1974 Academy Award were about as diverse as you could get. Not only did Mel Brooks give us a comedy song about the fake sheriff at the center of his movie Blazing Saddles, but an unknown songwriting duo offered up a jaunty song about a loveable dog. There's also the conventional love ballad and a sweet tribute to a fictional child in a musical that marked the return of legendary songwriters Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Host Jeff Commings offers up a somber piece of history regarding the five nominated songs and how their unpopularity made this year seemingly forgettable in the list of Oscar-nominated tunes.
More Episodes
The Academy increased its number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10 for the 2009 movie year, but the minimum of Best Original Song nominees dropped from three to two. Was this a signal that maybe the music branch was worried about getting at least three quality songs nominated? That wasn't...
Published 06/17/24
Only three songs were nominated for the Academy Award in 2008, the first time that had happened in 20 years. In this episode, we learn about the three songs, including two from prolific Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman that gave us some new sounds that had not been presented in Hollywood films. The...
Published 06/10/24
Published 06/10/24