Gaga vs. Rihanna vs. Mitski: The Starry Showdown in the Best-Original-Song Oscar Race - Vanity Fair

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And could all these pop megastars lose to a viral Indian hit?

January 24, 2023

Though the short list announced in December was even starrier, with songs from The Weeknd, Selena Gomez, and Taylor Swift that didn’t make the final cut, this year’s best-original-song Oscar race will once again be a celebrity-packed showdown. Lady Gaga earned her third nomination in the category for her power ballad “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick, while Rihanna made it in for her Black Panther: Wakanda Forever anthem “Lift Me Up.” They were joined, in a surprise for many Oscar watchers, by a different kind of pop royalty: David Byrne and Mistki, who with Ryan Lott were nominated for the Everything Everywhere All at Once song “This Is a Life.”

Gaga and Byrne are the heavy-hitters here; she won, of course, for A Star is Born in 2019, and he won for the original score of The Last Emperor in 1989, making him a first-time nominee in original song, wildly enough.

Rihanna comes with her own extensive awards history, though; she’s a nine-time Grammy winner and has been nominated for every other music award you can imagine, including Record of the Year three times. Mitski has just one Grammy nomination thus far, but it seems safe to assume more could be on the way.

So who will in in this starry showdown? Quite possibly none of them. Diane Warren earned her 14th career Oscar nomination for her contribution to the film Tell It Like a Woman, and though she‘s never won a competitive Oscar, she received an honorary award at last fall’s Governors Awards; as one of Oscar history’s most famous and cheerful losers, she’s an eternal threat to finally win.

But the contenders most Oscar watchers have their eyes on are M.M. Keeravaani and Chandrabose, the team behind RRR’s infectious dance number “Naatu Naatu.” The winner at the Golden Globes as well as the Critics Choice Awards, “Naatu Naatu” is both an earworm and promises what could be the most spectacular live performance in Oscar history. Stars N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan have already said they’re eager to perform it.

Every Oscar season brings a flood of major stars in the original song race, and even if they don’t wind up winning, they can be counted on to bring some extra glitz to the ceremony. Last year’s awards opened with Beyoncé performing her King Richard song “Be Alive” from a tennis court in Compton, and H.E.R.’s performance of her winning Judas and the Black Messiah song was a highlight of the pandemic-era 2021 Oscars. It’s safe to guess that most if not all of these celebrity nominees will be performing at the Oscars — Gaga has a particularly excellent history there — as the show producers continue to try to reverse the trend of falling ratings. Average viewers may not know that “Naatu Naatu” is the performance you absolutely can’t take a bathroom break for …. but they’ll learn pretty quickly.