Oscar's Best 'Unoriginal' Songs

With the 81st Academy Awards being doled out at the end of this month, the politics and backroom deals, the full-page ads in every Hollywood rag for half-deserving performances in major films, the one category that always irks me is the Best Original Song category.

Outside of the Hustle & Flow win by Three 6 Mafia in 2006, Eminem's "Lose Yourself" in 2001 and Isaac Hayes' "Them From Shaft" in 1971, the category is a competition for some of the worst songs ever recorded. Here's some the recent winners: Melissa Etheridge's vomit-spewing "I Need to Wake Up" from An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, "Into the West" from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003 (I can't even remember this being in the film!) and Randy Newman's "If I Didn't Have You" from Monsters, Inc. in 2001. Before that seven Disney animated films won Oscars in 12 years from 88 to 99. Can anyone out hum the melody of any of these songs outside of "Under The Sea"?

Here are a few of the good losers, the title track to That Thing You Do lost to "You Must Love Me" from Evita. Elliott Smiths' "Miss Misery" lost to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Gone On!" in 1997. Jonathan Richman's important contribution to the 1998 film, Something About Mary wasn't even nominated. Here's a list of all of the nominations in this category going back to its introduction in 1934 with "The Continental" from The Gay Divorcee.

What would be more interesting is to reward the original and artistic use of previously recorded material. There are many famous songs that have made movie history like Tom Cruise's air guitar romp to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock And Roll" in Risky Business, Otis Day & The Knights' "Shout" in Animal House and Martin Sheen hotel room breakdown to The Doors' "The End" in Apocalypse Now.

One nominee from this years' crop of films includes the use of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" at a key dramatic moment in Milk, the use of Ten Years After's "I’d Love To Change The World" while Downey Jr. et al wander lost through the jungle in Tropic Thunder.

These are only two examples that pop into mind. There are at least five great examples each year.