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Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
Despite none of the Best Original Song contenders taking the world by storm the way a “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” or “Shallow” has in the recent past, this was a good, kind of chaotic year for music in film.
Maybe the wildest part is that the frontrunners currently feature real life pop stars who made songs for independent films, while bigger productions like “Trap” and “Smile 2,” which both had music made for fake pop stars, have not gotten the same shine.
One of those aforementioned music superstars, Selena Gomez, ties into another trend this year with her film “Emilia Pérez”: Unconventional musicals. We saw prequel musicals, sequel musicals, a musical Part One, and more. But said Netflix film, about a Mexican cartel leader who seeks redemption after transitioning, has gotten consistent song award nominations for its two tracks “El Mal” and “Mi Camino,” both composed by French musicians Camille and Clément Ducol. The criticism of the film’s songs within the industry are that they are not quite catchy, but the entire cast and crew behind “Emilia Pérez” have been campaigning so hard, that it still feels likely the latter song gets nominated just so that Gomez, its performer, gets another shot at the Oscar stage in the event that she’s not nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
Disney is really trying to make inroads with this category again, releasing both “Moana 2” and “Mufasa: The Lion King” this year. The upside of the former film is that it is already a massive hit, but the criticism has been that songs like “Beyond” don’t live up to the music Lin-Manual Miranda wrote for the first film. Speaking of the two time Best Original Song nominee, he actually did write the original songs for “Mufasa: The Lion King,” but that film premiered only a week before it was already time for shortlist voting, so Academy members in the Music branch may have not had enough time to live with tracks like “I Always Wanted a Brother” and “Tell Me It’s You.” It is very difficult to count any Disney film out of this category though, given the studio’s importance to the Best Original Song legacy.
Some songs in the running like “Compress/Repress” from “Challengers,” “Beautiful That Way” from “The Last Showgirl,” and “Sick In The Head” from “Kneecap” are beginning to feel like insurance that films on the bubble of major, extremely competitive categories still make it into the Oscar conversation. That was certainly the case last year with Jon Batiste receiving a nomination for “It Never Went Away” in this category, when his documentary “American Symphony’ was snubbed. Same could be the case for Pharrell Williams’ animated documentary “Piece by Piece” too, which has a title track also contending for the Oscar.
While “Harper and Will Go West” from Netflix documentary “Will & Harper” felt like the frontrunner at the beginning of awards season, and recently landed a Critics Choice Awards nomination (songs written for documentaries are not eligible at the Golden Globes,) the song that really has been building momentum is “Kiss the Sky” from “The Wild Robot,” a film that is also a top Best Animated Feature contender.
However, one should never forget Diane Warren when it comes to conversations about Best Original Song. Though it took forever for Tyler Perry’s “The Six Triple Eight” to finally screen for voters, the song “The Journey,” performed by Oscar winner H.E.R., is genuinely one of the 15 time nominee’s best.
Contenders for the shortlist of 15 are listed in alphabetical order below. No song will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen the film.
Frontrunners:
“Like a Bird”— Abraham Alexander, Brandon Marcel, and Adrian Quesada (“Sing Sing”)
“El Mal”— Jacques Audiard, Camille, and Clément Ducol (“Emilia Pérez”)
“Sick In The Head”— Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, DJ Próvaí, Adrian Louis Richard Mcleod, and Toddla T (“Kneecap”)
“Beyond”—Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear (“Moana 2”)
“Bricks”— Jherek Bischoff and Andra Day (“Exhibiting Forgiveness”)
“Mi Camino”— Camille and Clément Ducol (“Emilia Pérez”)
“Never Too Late”—Brandi Carlile, Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Andrew Watt (“Elton John: Never Too Late”)
“Beautiful That Way”— Miley Cyrus, Lykke Li, and Andrew Wyatt (“The Last Showgirl”)
“Kiss The Sky”— Delacey, Jordan K. Johnson, Stefan Johnson, Maren Morris, Michael Pollack, and Ali Tamposi (“The Wild Robot”)
“Out of Oklahoma”— Luke Dick, Shane McAnally, Lainey Wilson (“Twisters”)
“Harper and Will Go West”— Sean Douglas, Josh Greenbaum, and Kristen Wiig, (“Will and Harper”)
“Compress/Repress”— Luca Guadagnino, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross (“Challengers”)
“The Journey”— Diane Warren (“The Six Triple Eight”)
“Piece by Piece”— Pharrell Williams (“Piece by Piece”)
“Forbidden Road”— Sacha Skarbek, Freddy Wexler, and Robbie Williams (“Better Man”)
Contenders:
“Not My Fault”— Alexander 23, Nell Benjamin, Jasper Harris, Megan Thee Stallion, Reneé Rapp, Jeff Richmond, Ryan Tedder, and Billy Walsh (“Mean Girls”)
“Can I Get a Chee Hoo?”—Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear (“Moana 2”)
“Winter Coat”— Nicholas Britell, Steve McQueen, and Taura Stinson (“Blitz”)
“I Always Wanted a Brother”—Nicholas Britell and Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Mufasa: The Lion King”)
“Vaster Than Empires”— William Burroughs, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross (“Queer”)
“Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma”— Luke Combs, Chip Matthews, and Jonathan Singleton (“Twisters”)
“Claw Machine”— Haley Dahl (“I Saw the TV Glow”)
“Even When I’m Not”— Delacey, Jordan K. Johnson, Stefan Johnson, Michael Pollack, Ali Tamposi, and Isaiah Tejada (“The Wild Robot”)
“The Idea of You”— Carl Falk, Savan Kotecha, and Albin Nedler (“The Idea of You”)
“Leash”—Jorge Elbrecht and Sky Ferreira (“Babygirl”)
“The Creatures of Nature”—Josh Lambert, Yvonne Lambert, Toto Miranda, and David Zellner (“Sasquatch Sunset”)
“If I Fall”— Nicholas James McGuinn, Quavo, Ty Dolla $ign, and Brian Tyler (“Transformers One”)
“Tell Me It’s You”—Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Mufasa: The Lion King”)
“Under the Tree”— Ed Sheeran (“That Christmas”)
“Double Life”— Pharrell Williams (“Despicable Me 4”)
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