Guild of Music Supervisors Awards: How often do they predict music Oscars?
"Like a Bird" from the prison drama Sing Sing just won a key prize at the 15th Annual Guild of Music Supervisors Awards on Sunday night so does that make the tune written by Abraham Alexander, Brandon Marcel, and Adrian Quesada the new frontrunner for the Best Song Oscar?
The guild has been handing out its award for Best Song Written and/or Recorded for a Film for the last nine years, and in that span it has lined up with the Oscars only three times: "City of Stars" from La La Land, "Shallow" from A Star is Born, and "What Was I Made For?" from Barbie. In four instances, the guild picked songs that were nominated for but didn't win the Oscar: "Mystery of Love" from Call Me by Your Name, "Hear My Voice" from The Trial of the Chicago 7, "Dos Oruguitas" from Encanto, and "This Is a Life" from Everything Everywhere All at Once. The other two times, the GMS chose songs that weren't nominated for Oscars: "See You Again" from Furious 7 and "One Little Soldier" from Bombshell.
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So the GMS Awards is far from a perfect barometer for the Oscars. What's more, only two of this year's six GMS nominees even made the cut at the Oscars: "Like a Bird" and Diane Warren's "The Journey" from The Six Triple Eight. The other four nominees at the GMS Awards were "Kiss the Sky" from The Wild Robot, "The Idea of You" from The Idea of You, "Out of Oklahoma" from Twisters, and "Why I'm Here" from Shirley. The three Oscar contenders not nominated by the guild were "El Mal" and "Mi Camino" from Emilia Pérez and "Never Too Late" from Elton John: Never Too Late.
Based on the official Gold Derby odds, "El Mal" is predicted to win the Oscar. The track already won Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards, but it has proved vulnerable at other events. At the Hollywood Music in Media Awards last year it lost Best Original Song — Feature Film to "The Journey," although Zoe Salda?a did win an HMMA for her onscreen performance of the song and its composers, Camille and Clément Ducol, were victorious for their original score. Then at the Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards, "El Mal" lost Best Original Song for a Comedy or Musical Visual Media Production to "Compress/Repress" from Challengers, which wasn't even nominated for Oscar.
SEEOscars Best Original Score breakdown: 'The Brutalist' has slight edge in a wide-open race
Having the best music supervision doesn't correlate to having the best score either. Only two GMS Award winners for Best Music Supervision have gone on to win Best Original Score at the Oscars: La La Land and Soul. And that makes sense. Much of the role of a music supervisor involves selecting and licensing music, so the GMS Award winners tend to be films that are heavy on songs, like Begin Again, Guardians of the Galaxy, Straight Outta Compton, and Pitch Perfect 3.
That's certainly true of this year's winners. Wicked claimed Best Music Supervision in Major Budget Films, A Complete Unknown took Best Music Supervision in Mid-Level Budget Films, and I Saw the TV Glow came away with Best Music Supervision in Low Budget Films. Of those, only Wicked is an Oscar nominee for Best Original Score, for co-composers Stephen Schwartz and John Powell. But since the GMS and the Oscars aren't usually on the same page, that may not help the film in our Oscar odds, where it currently ranks fifth.
The current Oscar frontrunner is Daniel Blumberg for The Brutalist, which was nominated by the guild in the low-budget category, but didn't win. However, Blumberg crucially won BAFTA and Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards for the score, sending him into the Oscars in a strong position, arguably still stronger than Wicked. We'll find out one way or another when the Oscars are presented on March 2.
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