The Golden Globes are beloved more because celebs get adorably drunk than the award show's propensity for picking deserving winners. To wit, last year they overlooked the eventual Oscar-winner (and pop cultural behemoth) "Let It Go" to dole the Golden Globe to U2 for their sadly ordinary Mandela tune "Ordinary Love."
That was because, I imagine, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association loves celebrity and Bono is a famous rock star who showed up while Idina Menzel wouldn't become famous for a few months (to the extent that John Travolta infamously called her Adele Dazeem at the Oscars a couple months later).
This is not to say they don't sometimes get it right. The first best original song Globe went to 1961's "Town Without Pity" and other deserving wins have gone to the likes of Bette Midler's "The Rose," the "Dirty Dancing" theme "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" and Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia."
But then check out some of the losers, like Eminem's "Lose Yourself," "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head" from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Isaac Hayes' "Theme for Shaft," The Bee Gees' "How Deep is Your Love," Blondie's "Call Me," Dolly Parton's "9 to 5," U2's "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" Aimee Mann's "Save Me" and, perhaps most egregiously, Prince's "When Doves Cry."
As you can see, this year's nominees aren't actually all that bad:
"Big Eyes" (Lana Del Rey) – "Big Eyes"
"Glory" (John Legend and Common) – "Selma"
"Mercy Is" (Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye) – "Noah"
"Opportunity" (Greg Kurstin, Sia Furler, Will Gluck) – "Annie"
"Yellow Flicker Beat" (Lorde) – "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1"
"Glory," a gospel-rap ode to civil rights has the sociopolitical wind at its back while Lorde's "Hunger Games" theme "Yellow Flicker Beat" has the pop-cultural wind behind it. But neither are the year's best original song from a film.
That would be "Everything Is Awesome!!!" from "The LEGO Movie."
Yes, really.
This collaboration between Canadian twins Tegan & Sara, comedy rap trio The Lonely Island and Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh was much more than your usual cartoon movie theme. It was an insanely infectious earworm that somehow managed to be both incredibly subversive and unexpectedly heartwarming.
As Mothersbaugh explained to Fox News, the song "was supposed to be like mind control early in the film. It's totally irritating, this kind of mindless mantra to get people up and working. It's like the whip crack on their back, but then by the end of the movie it morphs into, instead of being just a mindless, go-to-work song it becomes about co-operation and people working together to do bigger things."
Also, it's celebratory satire can't be separated from the (also awesome) film itself, whereas Lorde's song could have been on her album and Common/Legend collab feels more resonant as a Ferguson response than a movie theme.
Still, we can at least rest assured it will be better than last year. Here is our ranking of the past 15 Golden Globe best original song winners from Adele to U2.
Ranking The Past 15 Golden Globes Original Song Winners
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