Oscars Will Be Less Musical This Year With No Best Song Performances

Becky Bain | February 16, 2010 3:24 pm

After bloating the Academy Awards ceremony with ten Best Picture nominees, Oscar producers are freeing up some space by nixing performances of the five Best Song nominees. Instead, the songs will be played in brief clips over footage from their respective films.

For the record, we can’t even pretend to hum the melody of any of these tracks (which Entertainment Weekly‘s Music Mix names “the worst nominations ever). Can you blame us? Not one of these songs made a “Jai-Ho”-sized splash in pop culture in 2009 (nor did they have their own Pussycat Dolls remix). So join us in a primer of all five Best Song nominees after the jump, and find out if we’ll be missing anything come Oscar night.

“Almost There,” The Princess and the Frog (Music and Lyric by Randy Newman)

“Down in New Orleans,” The Princess and the Frog (Music and Lyric by Randy Newman)

“Loin de Paname,” Paris 36 (Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas)

“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart),” Crazy Heart (Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett)

“Take It All,” Nine (Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston)

Okay, so none of these songs will probably be missed, especially not when the show runs as long as it usually does. But why scrap the performances entirely? Why don’t Oscar producers just invite Beyoncé back to sing all the nominated songs, since they’re still frantically searching for ways to capture a younger, more hip demographic?

Plus, without these performances, we wouldn’t have amazing clips like this one from the 2000 ceremony: