Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, The Weeknd Up For Best Original Song Oscar

January 14, 2016

The nominees for the 88th annual Academy Awards were announced Thursday morning, and though the highest-ranking categories are already drawing a great deal of controversial fire over whitewashing, the Best Original Song category has managed to stick to the same formula of predictability, with a token “What the hell?” curveball.

Best Original Song was the first category revealed by directors Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee, with the diverse run of nominees consisting mostly of first-time nominees, with two-time Best Documentary winner J. Ralph and seven-time Best Original Song Nominee Diane Warren as the exceptions. And diverse it is, spanning BDSM love stories to wheezy James Bond themes, this year’s roster of nominees are perfectly representative of the wide-ranging year in music and film.

Here are the five nominees for Best Original Song:

1. “Writing’s On The Wall” from Spectre

Nominees: Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes

2. “Simple Song #3” from Youth

Nominees: David Lang

3. “Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction

Nominees: J. Ralph and Antony Hegarty

4. “Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground

Nominees: Lady Gaga and Diane Warren

5. “Earned It” from Fifty Shades Of Grey

Nominees: Abel Tesfaye, Stephan Moccio, Jason “DaHeala” Quenneville, Ahmad Balshe

The winner will be announced during the Oscars ceremony, which will air on February 28th at 7 p.m. EST on ABC.

Senior Writer

A senior writer at CraveOnline since 2006, Johnny has reported on music culture around the world for over a decade while setting a higher standard of reviews, editorials, photography and interviews with the industry's biggest names. Johnny has conceptualized and produced a wide range of original Crave features such as the long-running Band of The Month series, the CraveOnstage performance feature, the Music History video series and the Passport travel colum, among others. His Crave coverage spectrum has included Lifestyle, Travel, Film & TV, Politics, Sports, Fashion and Food writing.

A jack of all journalistic trades & master of several, you can also find his work on Antiquiet, Filter, Food Republic, Media Roots, The Owl Mag and beyond. His music photos can be seen on Instagram. Keep up with Johnny on Twitter at @JohnnyFirecloud, and on Facebook.