1992, Day Eight: Score

Here are three scores that one assumes almost made it - they were, after all, nominated or awarded elsewhere - but didn't make the final cut. Each album cover will bring you to the score's playlist on YouTube, so treat yourselves!

  

From left to right, you're looking at the Golden Globe-nominated score to 1492: Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis, the LAFCA Award-winning score to Damage by Zbigniew Preisner, and the BAFTA Awards- and Golden Globe-nominated score to The Last of the Mohicans by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman.

Great work, but not the nominees! The nominees are:

1992, Day Three: Original Song

Except for the recent phenomenons of "Shallow" from A Star is Born and the dance remixes of Frozen's "Let It Go", popular music and Oscar's Original Song category just don't have the same relationship as they did in the '80s and '90s. This year in particular: at the 36th Grammy Awards the following year, these same songs would compete against each other, and not just in the specialty categories for soundtracks. The Bodyguard's soundtrack won Album of the Year, Aladdin's "A whole New world" won Song of the Year, both competed against each other for Record of the Year (tho' The Bodyguard did so with the Dolly Parton cover "I will Always Love You" - and won), and, just like here, they made up 4/5 of the nominees for Best Song written for Visual Media.

OK, so I guess it was mostly The Bodyguard and Aladdin that dominated, but it's not difficult to see why. They're good songs! Actually, overall, it's an exceptional group of nominees, as you can hear for yourself:

Class of '86: Best Original Song

I love Bernadette Peters. Don't you wish she was handing you an Oscar? I love even more that the Original Song nominations named the songs' performers. Do they still? It seemed new when I watched this presentation. Or old, I guess.

It should be no surprise that Top Gun's "Take My Breath Away" went home with the win. Sure, "Glory of Love" from The Karate Kid: Part II spent more weeks at #1, but "Take My Breath Away" was the music of Maverick, baby! It was the number one movie of the year - hell, it was the number one soundtrack of the year, nine times platinum, one of the best-sellers of all time! You can't compete with those numbers baby.

Except on an awards ballot. So let's take a took at the nominees - in order of my rankings, from the bottom to the top. After the jump.