The Best Song Podcast

Sammy Cahn earned the first of five consecutive Academy Award nominations in 1948, working with longtime collaborator Jule Styne for Doris Day's film debut Romance on the High Seas. Leo Robin, already an Academy Award winner, had two songs nominated that year, but the hot young songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans were making a statement with a hit song for Bob Hope. Host Jeff Commings is read...

Not every Academy Award-nominated song has survived as beloved classics. Two of the nominees of 1947 illustrate that, and host Jeff Commings talks about one song that has plagued the Walt Disney Studio for generations because of its film's seemingly strong racist tone. There's another nominee that seemed innocent at the time, but also stands out for its insensitivity. With that aside, this year's...

After listing 14 nominees for the Academy Award for Best Song in 1945, the Academy fixed the rules and started limiting nominations to just five beginning in 1946. The number of nominated songs was down, but the quality of the songs seemed to be much higher. Host Jeff Commings guides you through the nominees for 1946, and two songs that failed to earn the nomination but have lived on as classic lo...

The Academy's rule that every studio or production company could submit a song for automatic nomination reached its apex in 1945 with 14 songs vying for the top award. It could be argued that one of the songs should not have been nominated because it never appeared in the film. But, the competition for the 1945 Best Song Academy Award was tight, with Bing Crosby originating two of the songs and so...

The year 1944 saw an astounding 12 songs nominated for the Academy Award, including Bing Crosby's latest chart-topping hit and one of the many songs from Judy Garland's latest musical sensation. Speaking of that musical, there was controversy over whether one of the men credited with the song actually helped to write it. That's just one of the many stories that host Jeff Commings shares on this ep...

World War II officially invaded the Academy Awards in 1943, with four of the 10 nominees for Best Song dealing with the war. One of them was a comical take on the men left behind, while the other three were love songs or tributes to the men fighting in Europe. In addition to giving more behind-the-scenes details of those four songs, host Jeff Commings talks about a musical featuring an all-black c...

The Gershwin brothers -- George and Ira -- were mentioned in one of the songs nominated for the Academy Award in 1942, but the brothers themselves did not earn a nomination. Respected songwriters such as Irving Berlin, Harry Warren, and Jerome Kern were on the docket, and a new talent named Sammy Cahn earned his first invitation to the Academy Awards ceremony. Lots of great music to hear in this e...

Hollywood had reason to be worried in 1941, not the least of which was the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese that December. Commercial television made its debut in July, giving the public a reason to stay home for entertainment instead of going to a theater. But, the output in Hollywood still gave us some top movies, including Citizen Kane. That movie didn't have an original song in it, and t...

World War II was raging in Europe in 1940, but Americans were largely going about business as usual while Hitler was conquering the continent. Hollywood was not yet affected by the war, and the Academy Award-nominated songs in 1940 brought us more classic tunes sung by Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. They are joined on this list of nine nominated songs by an animated cricket who helped raise the sta...

The year 1939 has been regarded as one of the most important years in film history, and you need to look no further than the Best Picture nominees from that year to prove that. Though one of the nominees for Best Song stands out tall among the others, the four songs that were nominated maintain the high quality that came from such a rich year in the movies. Host Jeff Commings talks about the weird...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made a big change to the rules for submitting songs for award consideration in 1938, allowing studios to submit one song for an automatic nomination. That resulted in 10 song nominees in 1938, and host Jeff Commings will bring you the histories behind all of them, including two songwriters who competed against themselves.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers continued to light up the silver screen in 1937, and it was the Gershwin brothers -- Ira and George -- who were responsible for the nominated song that accompanied their song-and-dance routine. Not to be outdone, Bing Crosby makes a play for a hit song with a lullaby, written by an old friend who had no plans to work in Hollywood.

The number of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Original Song increased from three to six in 1936, and host Jeff Commings presents all of them in this episode. We'll hear a song from Cole Porter, who brought his popular talents from Broadway to Hollywood for a musical starring Jimmy Stewart, and another hit from Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, who finally met after creating their nominated s...

The second year of the Oscar for Best Song introduces us to the soon-to-be legendary songwriter Irving Berlin, who crafted one of Fred Astaire's signature songs that led to one of the most iconic film dance scenes from Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We'll hear the three nominated songs from 1935, when movie songs were starting to become more acceptable in Hollywood and with the public.

This episode of The Best Song Podcast officially begins the journey through the 90 years of the Academy Award for Best Original Song, detailing the three nominees in the inaugural year of the award. In 1934, the songs not only showed the impact of songs in the movies, but introduced us to three soon-to-be legendary performers: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Bing Crosby. 

The first episode of The Best Song Podcast examines the early history of the movies, from the first words sung by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer in 1927 to the songs that could have won an Oscar in the later 1920s and early 1930s, if the Academy Award for Best Original Song had been created at that time. Host Jeff Commings gives you some background on the creators of such songs as "Isn't It Romantic...