The Songwriters Hall of Fame celebrated the 96th Academy Awards, which airs live on ABC on March 10, with an all-star virtual event featuring the 2024 Oscar-nominated songwriters. A Conversation with 2024 Oscar-Nominated Songwriters for Best Original Song is available to view for free at songhall.org from February 8 through March 10.
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Moderated by songwriter and producer Nile Rodgers, chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Paul Williams—who won an Academy Award winner for Best Original Song for his A Star is Born song “Evergreen” in 1977—the eighth annual event highlighted the songwriters nominated in the Best Original Song category in 2024.
The star-studded panel features Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, co-writers of “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie; Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, co-writers of “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie; Jon Batiste, who co-wrote “It Never Went Away” with Dan Wilson for American Symphony; Diane Warren, writer of “The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot; and Scott George, writer of “Wahzhazie (A Song for My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon.
Throughout the conversation, the nominees discussed their songwriting processes, influences, and more. Ronson and Wyatt, like Williams, also won an Oscar for Best Original Song for A Star is Born, with their song “Shallow,” which was featured in the 2018 remake and performed by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, who also co-wrote the song with Anthony Rossomando.
For Barbie, Ronson said they needed to create a song for the big dance number that speaks from character Ken’s “point of view.” Initially, actor Ryan Gosling wasn’t set to sing in the film until Ronson and Wyatt shared a demo of the song with director Greta Gerwig and Gosling.
“We sent Greta the demo and she really loved it and she played it for Ryan, and Ryan really loved it,” said Ronson, “She said ‘Actually, we’re going to write this song into the movie.” Ronson added, “We were completely inspired by the script. We had’ve never written a song like this ever before where it was completely from the words and the energy and emotion from Greta and Noah [Barbie co-writer Noah Baumbach].”
Warren, a 15-time Oscar nominee, who received an Honorarry Oscar in 2022, talked about working on Eva Longoria-directed Flamin’ Hot, the story about former janitor Richard Montañez, who created Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. “I was fascinated that this guy who was a janitor had this idea and everyone was trying to shut him down, and he ended up calling the head of the company from the janitor’s room,” said Warren about her inspiration behind the song for the film.
“I love this movie so much,” said Warren, who immediately had her title, “The Fire Inside,” after seeing the movie. “It had two meanings: the fire inside, if you eat Cheetos you will have a fire inside—maybe not the kind you want. But ‘The Fire Inside’ is really about passion,” added Warren. “As I’m writing the song for Richard Montañez … I’m going ‘God, this is my story, too,’ and it became personal.”
When talking about their Oscar-nominated song “What Was I Made For?” Finneas O’Connell said he and Eilish said they prodded director Gerwig about what kind of song she needed in the film. “We were just very moved by the whole thing,” said O’Connell. “I remember us asking Greta that day ‘If you can have us write anything what do you need?'” O’Connell said they asked the director. Gerwig said that she didn’t have Barbie’s “heart song” yet.
The siblings eventually wrote a ballad around the scene where Barbie starts to feel for the first time. “The pressure was that we thought the movie was so magnificent, and we were so moved by it,” said O’Connell. “The next day were supposed to be working on Billie’s next album, and we were roadblocked.”
O’Connell and Eilish started working on the song the next day, but it didn’t come easily. “It was 24 hours after we saw the movie, and I remember seeing the movie, I was like ‘Oh, this is really good,’ and I don’t know if I’m good anymore, and I don’t know if I can match this,'” shared Eilish. “I was kind of freaked out by that. … I was nervous because I didn’t think I had it in me anymore to make a good song.”
Just as Eilish was about to give up writing “What Was I Made For?” flooded out of the duo. “We tried to come up with stuff, and we couldn’t, and I was like keys in hand, going to walk out the door, gonna go home—give up,” said Eilish. “And Finneas was like ‘What if we just try to write a Barbie song?”
Eilish added, “I remember being like ‘That’s a completely ridiculous idea.’ That’s like being the most tired you’ve ever been and somebody’s like ‘Let’s go run a marathon.’ … And we sat down and wrote the entire song in an hour.”
This year, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, and Walter Becker, along with Non-Performer inductees Hillary Lindsey, Timbaland (Timothy Mosley), and Dean Pitchford were named the class of new inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2024.
The Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees will be honored during the 53rd Annual Induction and Awards Gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City on June 13, 2024.
(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for ABA)
