News on the Oscar front is still a little light as we wait for the Telluride, Venice and Toronto Film Festivals to get into full swing, but recently some more news on the Best Original Song front came rolling in as Karen O.‘s new track, “Strange Love”, from Frankenweenie can now be heard online and she gave an interview with Rolling Stone talking about how her musical inspiration came from the film’s that inspired Frankenweenie as she sought out to create an “unconventional unconditional love song” for Tim Burton‘s new stop-motion animated film:
“There’s a magic and nostalgia in this film that reminded me of being raised on Tim Burton’s catalog… I was thinking, ‘Oh yeah, this man shaped my artistic sensibility over the past 20 years alongside thousands of other impressionable offbeat youths.’ Tim wanted an unconventional unconditional love song.
“My music inspiration came out of the same era of B-movie fright film references sprinkled throughout the film. I went in the direction of exotica and calypso stylistically because it’s quirky, good vibes music of that era, and when you throw in a Theremin solo, it’s a marriage made in heaven. I remember Beetlejuice introducing me to the genius of Harry Belafonte’s calypso record, so I wanted to give a nod to that, too.”
“Strange Love” is teased in the YouTube video embedded here or you can listed to the whole song over at Pitchfork.
As far as the competition is concerned in the Best Original Song category I started to think of other possible contenders. The recently released Sparkle has some new Whitney Houston tracks, but that soundtrack isn’t getting rave reviews and the film seems to have already been forgotten. A potentially major contender in several categories, Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables, is already confirmed to have a new song that will be sung by Hugh Jackman, written by composer Claude-Michel Schönberg. Otherwise, all I know of are a few, already released titles that could possibly play a part.
First there’s “Learn me Right” from Brave by Mumford and Sons with Birdy, then “Safe and Sound” by Taylor Swift from The Hunger Games and The Civil Wars and then Florence + The Machine‘s “Breath of Life” from Snow White and the Huntsman. I’m not sure what the eligibility of any of these tracks are at the moment, but as I put my first batch of predictions together this is what I’m working with right now.
You can check out the three songs I just mentioned directly below and I’d love to hear any additional songs you think I may be forgetting.
