The 96th Academy Awards have a wide range of songs and scores nominated, including two songs from “Barbie” that are up for best song. The Academy music branch’s 390 voting members selected “What Was I Made For?” by Billy Eilish and Finneas O’Connell and “I’m Just Ken” by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt.
According to Academy rules, only two of the three “Barbie” songs that were shortlisted—”Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa being the third—can be nominated. Two songwriters who have previously won one of those golden statues will receive the Oscar if either of the “Barbie” songs wins on March 10.
These songs are already regarded as front-runners. While Ronson and Wyatt were two of four 2018 winners for Lady Gaga’s song “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born,” siblings Eilish and O’Connell won for the James Bond movie “No Time to Die” in 2021.
They will face off against “It Never Went Away” by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson from “American Symphony,” “The Fire Inside” by Diane Warren from “Flamin’ Hot,” and the Native American chant “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” by Scott George from “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Batiste won previously as a co-composer for the Pixar picture “Soul” from 2020. Warren has written songs for the cinema for 36 years, and this is her 15th nomination. Despite not winning a competition, she was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2022 for her body of work.
Songs from “Asteroid City,” “The Color Purple,” “Flora and Son,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” “Past Lives,” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” were among those that the music branch skipped.
15 songs have been selected for the shortlist throughout the previous few years, and participants then narrow the selection down to a final five. The score nominations for this year were more unpredictable.
For Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” Ludwig Göransson, who previously won an Oscar for the film “Black Panther” in 2018 and was nominated for a song in the 2022 follow-up “Wakanda Forever,” received his third nomination.
For the movie, Göransson has already received Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards wins. For his soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Robbie Robertson was nominated for a posthumous Oscar. He passed away on August 9.
The Band’s guitarist and songwriter was a Native American man’s son, so this was his tenth project with Scorsese, following “The Last Waltz” and “The Color of Money.” It was particularly meaningful to him. He is honored in the film.
The breezy “American Fiction” score by Laura Karpman was also selected by the music branch. Despite having five Emmys, having served as a governor of the music branch in the past, co-founding the Alliance for Women Film Composers, and being well acknowledged for her role in diversifying the Academy membership, this is Karpman’s first Oscar nomination.
John Williams, 91, was nominated for a 54th time for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” The renowned composer, who has won five Oscars in total, has long maintained the distinction of being the musician with the most nominations in Oscar history.
She is also the most nominated person alive overall. Beginning with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981, he received nominations for the first three Indiana Jones films. With his first film music, “Poor Things,” a sci-fi comedy-drama starring Emma Stone and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, English composer Jerskin Fendrix was nominated for an Oscar for the first time.