By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | January 27, 2025 |
Few things in life are certain, but there are some universal truths. We’ll all die, we’ll all be touched by sadness and joy throughout our brief times on this planet, and every single year, Diane Warren will receive an Oscar nomination for a song that nobody has heard of. The legendary songwriter landed her 16th nod, breaking a record in the Best Original Song category.
Her latest victory is for ‘The Journey,’ a song from the Tyler Perry-directed historical war drama The Six Triple Eight. With music and lyrics by Warren, the song is sung by H.E.R., a relentless award-winning singing machine. Perhaps Warren is hoping that luck will rub off on her because she has infamously never won a competitive Oscar. The Academy gave her an honourary award in 2022, perhaps as a way to get her to give up. It’s only made her more determined. First nominated in 1987, she’s made the line-up every year since 2014.
Diane Warren is an undisputed legend in the American music world. She’s written nine number-one songs and has 33 top-ten hits on the Billboard Top 100. You have most assuredly rocked out or drunkenly sang along to something she wrote, be it ‘How Do I Live’ for LeAnn Rimes, ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ for Cher, or ‘Un-Break My Heart’ for Toni Braxton. She’s a power ballad queen who has done it all, from writing a song for Eurovision to collaborating with Taylor Swift. Her legacy is assured. She’s also written a steady stream of bangers for major movies. She co-wrote ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ for Mannequin and ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ for Armageddon. If you needed that unforgettable hyper-emotional earworm for your blockbuster, Warren was your woman. Both of these songs were nominated for Best Original Song but lost to ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’ and ‘When You Believe’ respectively. No shame in that, especially since her works have remained popular in the interim decades.
But sometime in the mid-2010s, Warren became absolutely determined to finally win that Oscar. And why not? If Leonardo DiCaprio’s blatant thirst for Best Actor could get people cheering in his corner, why not her too? She became even more prolific than she already was and suddenly there were new movie songs every year, usually for films you either hadn’t heard of or were only vaguely familiar with. Maybe you were a Gina Prince-Bythewood fan so you knew about Beyond the Lights but there’s no way you knew what Tell It Like a Woman was, or Four Good Days (I reviewed the latter and I still don’t really know what it is.) Thus a new pattern was established: Warren songs in niche underseen movies getting nominated solely based on her name.
The Best Original Song category is a weird one. A lot of below-the-line tech nominations get less attention from voters than the headline-grabbing categories, such as director and acting. It’s not uncommon to read those tediously smug ‘Honest Academy Voter’ ballots the trades publish and see people openly admit that they didn’t listen to any of the songs or straight-up don’t care about the field. The music branch has also been mired in issues pertaining to its low voter turnout and perceived lack of competition. Once upon a time, those chart-topping music songs were commonplace. Now, breakout hits like ‘Shallow’ or ‘I’m Just Ken’ are the exception, not the rule. What this means is that it’s often seen as far easier to game the system if you’re, say, a musician looking to nab the O in the EGOT sweep. Just be an A-Lister like Bono or Sting and, even if nobody saw the documentary your song was from, your name will push you onto the longlist, at the very least.
So, what does this mean for Diane Warren? Well, it means that her endless nominations make a lot more sense. When the competition is sparse and you’re an industry stalwart who everyone knows, all your pals will vote you into the nominees’ slate. But the win? That’s tougher to guarantee. In the ’80s and ’90s, when her film songs were at their best, she usually had the perils of being nominated against undeniable mega-hits like ‘My Heart Will Go On’ or legends like Phil Collins or Randy Newman. The last decade has seen her losing largely to bigger names or films that people actually saw. Of course her bland song for the Thurgood Marshall biopic lost to ‘Remember Me’ from Coco. Obviously her Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary song lost to ‘Shallow.’
But there’s also the balladeering elephant in the room: Diane Warren’s past decade of music song output has been bad. The vast majority of these numbers are unmemorable and poorly written. She is not bringing her A-Game. The Flamin’ Hot Cheetos inspirational song for a bogus biopic is, frankly, embarrassing when compared to Billie Eilish and Mark Ronson at their peak with the Barbie soundtrack or Native American singer Scott George’s rousing ‘Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)’, with its cultural and historical heft, from Killers of the Flower Moon. Her 2025 nominee is actually one of the better songs, but the bar is so low that it’s damning with faint praise to even say that. When you wrote ‘Rhythm of the Night’ and ‘Un-Break My Heart’, how can all of these desperate grabs for Oscar glory feel like anything other than half-assed by comparison? It doesn’t help that none of these numbers feel essential to the film. They’re end credits filler, nothing more.
This year, Warren is nominated alongside Elton John, the Grammy-winning Black Pumas member Adrian Quesada, and two songs from Emilia Perez. It’s a weak damn year. Frankly, I’m not really a fan of any of the songs and it feels like one from Emilia Perez will win by default simply because it’s the year’s most nominated film. Why not just give it to Warren now? End the agony and do it with a song that doesn’t 100% blow. Warren doesn’t seem motivated to make something more memorable than these half-baked dirges, so stringing her along for another decade probably won’t encourage her to make another ‘If I Could Turn Back Time.’ I like shameless Oscar thirst, but it’s no fun rooting for someone who’s not doing good work to back up the ambition.