The Best Song Podcast

The year after the juggernaut Oscar-winning song "My Heart Will Go On," songwriters had a high standard to reach for the songs featured in films released in 1998. From Stephen Schwartz and Randy Newman to Diane Warren and Carole Bayer Sager, the nominated tunesmiths offered the Academy five nominees that gave us no frontrunner status for the big award.

The juggernaut song "My Heart Will Go On" was crowned an Oscar winner the second that Titanic made its theatrical debut, but the other four songs nominated with it for the 1997 Original Song Oscar were no duds. Host Jeff Commings brings you the stories behind these songs, and the songwriters who created them.

Host Jeff Commings talks with songwriters Jud Friedman and Allan Rich about almost not having their song "For the First Time" appear in the movie One Fine Day (thanks to Rod Stewart), and learns from Tim Rice the process behind putting a new song into the iconic Evita score and getting an Oscar nomination for it. Space Jam featured many songs that made for a popular soundtrack, including the R. Ke...

The members of the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences split the original score category in two in 1995, but the rules for original song stayed the same. Pop songs and traditional movie songs were still in the running for the biggest movie award, including a chance for Alan Menken to earn a record-tying fourth Original Song Oscar. His competition included Oscar winners...

Tim Rice returns to the show to offer a masterclass in songwriting as he talks about writing the lyrics for the three Oscar-nominated songs from the animated movie The Lion King. He details how the song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" changed and why writing a song for a warthog shouldn't feel much different from writing for "the wife of an Argentinian dictator."

The pop music world invaded the Academy Awards honoring films from 1993, with Janet Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and James Ingram among the nominees for the Best Original Song Oscar. Host Jeff Commings has many stories to share about the creation of the five Oscar-nominated songs, and why Danny Elfman couldn't join the roster for his songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Host Jeff Commings invited not one, not two, but THREE Oscar-nominated songwriters to this episode to share their behind-the-scenes tales of creating two of the five Oscar nominees for original song of 1992. Jud Friedman and Allan Rich talk about writing "Run to You" for Whitney Houston and creating a guerilla campaign for an Oscar nomination. Tim Rice discusses his detour into writing songs for A...

History was made with the Original Song Oscar nominees from 1991, as three songs from one movie made the list. Those songs came from the Disney animated film Beauty and the Beast, which was a landmark film in more ways than its song nominations. Host Jeff Commings guides you through this major year for movie songs, highlighting a worldwide hit by Bryan Adams and one of the two songs to survive a m...

Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim earned his first Oscar nomination for writing a song for the action film Dick Tracy, pitting himself for the industry's highest award against a number-one song by Jon Bon Jovi, and a rare song composition by John Williams. Host Jeff Commings also details the hit songs that missed out on a nomination, including others that Sondheim wrote for Dick Tracy, and an Alan...

Dean Pitchford returns to the show to talk about achieving his fourth Oscar nomination, this time for the love ballad "After All." He discusses writing a more "mature" song than he had written for previous films, why Cher and Peter Cetera didn't record their vocals at the same time, and why he felt his song had little chance to win the Original Song Oscar. After listening to all five nominated son...

Only three songs were nominated for the Academy Award in 1988, the first time the list of nominees was that low since the 1930s. An Academy rule forced the list to be cut to three in that year, and the ones that made the final list gave Oscar voters a tough choice over which should be picked as the best of the year. Host Jeff Commings details those three songs, and mentions a comeback song from Th...

Only one of the Oscar-nominated songwriters for 1987 had previously been invited to the Academy Awards, giving us 10 men and women getting their first chances to win an Oscar. They all gave us a list of five nominated songs -- many of which have become classics -- that made the competition for the Academy Award very tight that year. The public loved many of the songs as well, with three of the fiv...

Academy voters increasingly became aware of the synergy between Hollywood and the music industry, voting for a Billboard #1 song for its Oscar for the past five years. Would that continue with the nominated songs from 1986? Two number-one songs were in contention, including a song performed by two mice and another for a sultry love scene for an action movie. Host Jeff Commings tells the stories be...

After the historic list of Oscar-nominated songs of 1984, the five nominees for 1985 had a lot to live up to. On this episode of The Best Song Podcast, host Jeff Commings tells of Lionel Richie's double nomination in the same year as his successful "We Are the World" composition, and the popular movie songs that missed out on a nomination.

Dean Pitchford returns to The Best Song Podcast to talk about bringing the 1984 movie Footloose to the big screen, and finding the best collaborators to write the songs from the hit soundtrack. That includes working with Kenny Loggins, who wrote and recorded the title song under very interesting circumstances. Host Jeff Commings talks with Pitchford about that Oscar-nominated song as well as "Let'...

The 50th anniversary of the Original Song Academy Award featured two songs from the mega-popular movie Flashdance, which re-ignited the movie soundtrack craze, and two songs from Barbra Streisand's directorial debut Yentl. The other nominated song really did feel like a fifth wheel alongside these four songs, and we'll learn more about the journeys the songwriters took to get them out into the wor...

Alan and Marilyn Bergman made history with their Oscar nominations for original song of 1982, becoming the first people to earn three song nominations in one year from three different films. One of those was Luciano Pavarotti's first (and last) movie role, and another was a love song for the biggest comedy of 1982. Learn more about these nominated songs, and the other two that offered some tight c...

The star power among the Oscar-nominated songwriters for 1981 was very high. Lionel Richie, Christopher Cross, Carole Bayer Sager, and Randy Newman were just a few of the top names looking to become Oscar winners for their work writing songs for the movies. Host Jeff Commings tells the stories behind creating these hit songs, including Lionel Richie's tale of trying to get Diana Ross into the stud...

Dean Pitchford joins the show to talk about writing the Oscar-nominated title song from the 1980 movie Fame. In addition to his recollections of the process he and composer Michael Gore took to arrive at the global hit song, Pitchford talks about the future recording star who helped add a "hook" to the song, and why Dolly Parton was his song's biggest competition.

Kermit the Frog's film debut brought Oscar winner Paul Williams his final Oscar nomination, writing the classic song "The Rainbow Connection" with Kenny Ascher. Host Jeff Commings shares Williams' thoughts about the meaning of the wistful lyrics and why Paul Williams was not able to continue his work in the 1980s. Other Oscar winners in contention for the 1979 Original Song Oscar were Henry Mancin...

The pressure of creating a hit song after the success of "Evergreen" and "You Light Up My Life" was felt in 1978, though the Oscar-nominated songs did not really reach that bar. But not for lack of trying. The musical Grease became the highest-grossing musical of the time, cemented Olivia Newton-John as a movie star and gave her a great love song that was new to the musical and a requirement in he...

One of the most popular songs of the 1970s found its way onto the list of Academy Award nominees for 1977, and the story of the song's rise to fame is just a small part of the legacy of "You Light Up My Life." Host Jeff Commings talks about the song's history and its post-Oscars aftermath, as well as the two songs nominated from Disney movies that year, a retelling of the Cinderella story, and the...

Horror, comedy, romance, and action are all represented in the five songs nominated for the Academy Award from 1976. Host Jeff Commings tells the stories of the creation of Barbra Streisand's first songwriting effort, Bill Conti's on-the-cheap recording of the Rocky theme song, and how Peter Sellers made an earnest love song laugh-out-loud funny.

The first guest of The Best Song Podcast is Keith Carradine, who talks with host Jeff Commings about writing the Oscar-nominated song "I'm Easy" for the 1975 Robert Altman film Nashville. Carradine tells of the origins of the film's concept, including having actors write and perform their own songs, and how he handled the sudden award attention for his song. You'll also learn about the other four...

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 t...