What if Singers Got Nominated for Best Original Song?

Whitney Houston with Bruce Springsteen at the Oscars

I recently was reading an article online (if I could find it, I'd reference it, but alas I cannot) about the new Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody.  In it, they talked about how Houston who won an Emmy & a Grammy, had gotten halfway to the entertainment honorific the "EGOT," coming short a Tony & an Oscar.  In the article, though, they erroneously stated that Houston had been nominated for an Oscar for her songs "I Have Nothing" and "Run to You" from The Bodyguard...which is not true.  Houston was in The Bodyguard, she did sing those songs, and they were cited for Academy Awards (eventually losing to Aladdin), but she wasn't nominated for them because she was not one of the composers or lyricists of the songs.  At the Oscars, the people who sing the Best Original Song nominees in their movies are not nominated-that only goes to the people who write the songs...

...but this got me thinking-what if they did get nominated?  The Best Original Song category started in 1934 at the Oscars, and though the number of nominees have changed through the years, it has been omnipresent ever since.  A quick google search bore out that it was somewhat easy to find the number of people who had sang the most Oscar-winning songs, but not when it came to the Oscar nominees.  And so over Christmas break, I decided that it was my duty to answer that question.  Today we're going to discuss who would be the biggest victors if Oscar gave nominations to the people who sang songs in movies.

Starting this off, it was a lot harder to ascertain who actually sang the songs in some movies than you would expect.  For starters, a lot of songs in movies are sung by choruses or large groups of non-famous people.  Think of a song like "Days of Wine and Roses" where the initial song in the movie is clearly sung by a chorus of singers.  This happens by my count 22 times, including for three winning songs, so I didn't count those for my nomination total.

Secondly, a lot of the most popular versions of Oscar-winning songs weren't sung by those artists in the original movie.  "Days of Wine and Roses," for example, you'd normally associate with Andy Williams, but he didn't sing it in the original movie.  Debby Boone's version of "You Light Up My Life" isn't in the movie of the same name despite being a Number 1 hit for most of 1977, and Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" is not only not sung by him in Captain Carey USA, it's not even sung in English.  So there was a lot of bubble bursting, particularly for films I hadn't seen, in researching this article.

It also has to be noted that dubbing is frequently used, especially in older films.  If you watched the movies alone, you'd assume that people like Jeanne Crain, Deborah Kerr, & Rita Hayworth would get nominated for Oscars this way, but you'd be wrong-they're all dubbing.  Sally Sweetland, who was a prolific voice dubber for women like Joan Leslie & Martha Vickers in the 1940's, would've gotten three nominations despite never appearing in her movies.

And lastly, I have to admit in some cases it's difficult to know where to draw the line on "who is a principal vocalist or not."  If the Academy allowed this, there'd be rules about it, but I tried my best judgment.  If a song only had one singer, obviously they got it, but in duets or group songs, I went with the primary artists.  This resulted in 376 musicians or musical acts (occasionally I just gave the nomination to a group), singing Oscar nominated songs.  We're going to break down below who benefits the most from this rule change.

14 nominations: The one, undisputed king of nominations this way would be Bing Crosby, who has sung 14 Oscar-nominated songs onscreen, and would've gotten four Oscar statues this way alone to go with his Best Actor citation in 1944.  Everything from legendary songs like "White Christmas" in Holiday Inn and "Swinging on a Star" from Going My Way to songs you'd be forgiven for not knowing ("Zing a Little Zong" being the deepest cut) number among Crosby's nominations.  Crosby's the only person who gets to double digits this way.

9 nominations: Coming in behind Crosby is Fred Astaire, who never won a competitive Oscar, but would've gotten nine nominations and a trophy for "The Way You Look Tonight" from Swing Time.  Astaire's nominations largely come from his work with Ginger Rogers in the 1930's, and only one of his songs comes post 1943 ("Something's Gotta Give" from 1955's Daddy Long Legs).  For comparison's sake, Ginger Rogers only gets two nominations this way, though she'd double her win count for being a vocalist on "The Continental" in The Gay Divorcee (I watched the scene specifically to see if Astaire sang in it, and he doesn't).

7 nominations: Four singers tie for third, with seven songs a piece, and we have a couple of firsts with this quartet.  Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, & Randy Newman all sang seven songs, and it's worth noting that while all of these people are Oscar winners (Garland is the only one who never won a competitive trophy in her career), two of them are noted songwriters.  Both Streisand & Newman have not only been nominated for Best Original Song, but they've also won it (Streisand for 1976's "Evergreen," Newman for 2001's "If I Didn't Have You" and 2010's "We Belong Together").  Both are also still living & work regularly, so if anyone's going to come close to at least tying Astaire, these are your candidates.

6 nominations: Only one singer gets sixth place, and that's Doris Day, who would've gotten two trophies for singing 1953's "Secret Love" (in Calamity Jane) and 1956's "Que Sera Sera" (in The Man Who Knew Too Much).  Day is a first on our list for a very big reason.  While she was nominated for an Oscar in real life (as Best Actress in 1959 for Pillow Talk), she never won an Oscar, not even an honorary trophy, which would make her the first person on this list to not have a statue of some sort from the Academy.  However, you have to go one step down to have the title of "Oscar nominee" bestowed on someone for the first time through this method.

5 nominations: Three singers would get five nominations this way, and while Julie Andrews won Best Actress in 1964, neither Johnny Mathis nor Betty Grable ever were nominated for an Oscar in their lifetimes (Mathis, at age 87, is still alive and still performs, though his last Oscar-nominated song was 1978's "Same Time, Next Year").  Before writing this article, it never would've occurred to me that Mathis should get an Honorary Oscar, but given this distinction...maybe he deserves to at least be in the conversation?

4 nominations: That gets us through the Top 10, though I'll call out some notables for the 3-4 nomination mentions.  Four people have sung four Oscar-nominated songs: Sting, Phil Collins, Jennifer Warnes, & Deanna Durbin.  Sting & Collins are both Oscar-nominated songwriters (Collins has an Oscar), while the other two never won competitive statues (Durbin won a Juvenile Oscar).  Warnes would've cleaned up under these rules-of her three Oscar-nominated songs, only one (1981's "One More Hour") didn't win.

3 nominations: Once you get below 4 nominations, the number of singers get increasingly large, here 15 singers have sung three Oscar-blessed songs.  Three nominations is where Whitney Houston would land (she also sang 1998's "When You Believe," which would've gotten her the Oscar for her hypothetical EGOT if these rules existed).  Alice Faye & Bob Hope are here, both actors who never got Oscar nominations in real life, and we have active singers who could definitely add to their counts in this lineup (Celine Dion, Dolly Parton, & AR Rahman all still work regularly).  For those keeping track at home, this year we'll almost certainly add Lady Gaga to this list, though she's gotten a nomination for each of her songs and would again even if she weren't singing for "Hold My Hand" from Top Gun: Maverick.