My COTW last week came from Cedar Falls on the Oscar Nominations post: “Trolling Diane Warren with her 17th inevitably unsuccessful Oscar nom just feels cruel at this point.” Nailed it! Cause there’s no stopping “Golden” this year — the chart-topping hit from KPop Demon Hunters is goin’ up, up, up, it’s its moment! (Not sorry, had to!) But adding extra salt to the wound is that not only is Diane Warren nominated for her 17th competitive Best Original Song Oscar that she is set to lose again (graciously, of course, and she does have an honorary Oscar from 2022), but it’s for a song from a documentary… ABOUT Diane Warren. That feels like a whole new layer of cruelty! Luckily, it doesn’t feel that way to Diane. While some people might be bitter at this point (hi, it’s me, I’m some people), Diane has a much better disposition. She was at a film screening the day the nominations came out, and said on the red carpet that “it never gets old.”
“It’s always exciting. I never lose sight of that,” Warren exclusively told The Post while at the Los Angeles screening of “The Gray House” on Thursday. “It never gets old.”
As for what the superstar was feeling going into nomination day, she confessed: “Nervousness. You never know what’s going to happen. And this is the first time I wrote a song for a movie about me. It’s my documentary ‘Relentless.’ To write a song, ‘Like, what kind of song do I write?’ And I feel like I really wrote a great song.”
“It’s called ‘Dear Me.’ Kesha sings it,” detailed Warren, “It’s basically, if you could talk to your younger self, what would you say? Your messed up young yourself that feels like it’s the end of the world and you’re telling you it’s going to be okay. And that’s the song I wrote. I’m really excited.”
In anticipation for the Oscar announcements, the hitmaker revealed she was “up all night.”
“The documentary is up for a Grammy as well,” Warren gushed. “So one’s up for a Grammy and the song’s up for the Oscars, how cool is that?”
It’s no secret the Golden Globes winner has an ear for the arts, and she knew Kesha would be the perfect fit to sing “Dear Me.”
“So, when I do a song for a movie, I’m a casting director. The artist has to be authentic to the movie and authentic to the song and of course, be able to sing it,” Warren explained. “I had a rough childhood and I thought, ‘Okay, the person is going to have to sing the song.’ I’ve known Kesha for years, and I know she’s had a rough time of it, and I knew that she’d be able to relate and it would resonate with her.”
After her 16th defeat last year (to “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez; that didn’t age well… seconds after it was announced as the winner) Diane kept her chin up and strolled into the after parties saying “you can’t get rid of me.” I have no doubt she’ll do the same this year. I do hope that the Oscars return to letting the nominated songs perform. For one thing, I’d think the show would be dying for the audience Huntrix would bring in. Then to think of Kesha performing this song at the Academy Awards after everything she’s been through, that actually is making me choke up. I really hope it happens.
Diane is quite talented as a “casting director,” as she put it; she has a knack for pairing artist with song. The number one song I think should’ve been her Oscar win was in 1999 for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon, memorably sung by Aerosmith. (It lost to “When You Believe” from The Prince of Egypt.) The second time I think Diane was robbed was in 2016 when Diane and Lady Gaga collaborated on “Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground. Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall” won instead, from Spectre. (Which makes sense because the Academy has a hard on for Bond films and is physically incapable of NOT giving them Best Song. Rant over.)
Quick reminder of this year’s nominees:
“Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless
“Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters
“I Lied to You” from Sinners
“Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!
“Train Dreams” from Train Dreams
Quick reminder that the Academy was SO sick of all things Wicked they snubbed it for not one but two new songs.
Photos credit: Sadou Faye/Avalon, Avalon.red/Avalon, SI/Avalon
Every year I try to see every film nominated in every category and almost every year I have to track down some obscure film because Dianne Warren wrote a song for it. This year, it was relentless. It’s on Prime. The best parts of it are Cher and Diane’s late cat Mouse.
Poor Diane has had bad luck at the Oscars. I really think she would have won for “How Do I Live” except for one tiny obstacle – that was the year of Titanic and “My Heart Will Go On”. If she’d been nominated any other year for How Do I Live (which, while yes it was in ConAir, is also a huge ballad), I feel like she would have won with it.
I guess they are doing the Susan Lucci on her,im not a soap watcher so i dont know if Susan was always being robbed or they were just torturing her. As far as Diane songs like ‘How do i live,There you’ll be and I dont wanna miss a thing’ were definitely robbed.
I mean I’m a fan of Wicked and I thought the two original songs were pretty bad. What a waste of Cynthia Erivo’s beautiful voice that ballad was.