Oscar Nominations 2024: Billie Eilish, Diane Warren, “I’m Just Ken” Up For Best Original Song

This morning, the Acadamy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced this year’s Oscar nominations, and they’re as weird as ever. People are already pointing out all of this year’s notable snubs, including Margot Robbie, Greta Lee, and the entire cast of May December, which only got a screenplay nomination. Greta Gerwig also got a screenplay nomination, but she’s once again been shut out of Best Director. Nobody has mentioned Dua Lipa yet, but I’m sure we’ll get there.

This year’s nominations for the Best Original Song award are just a fascinating jumble. There are two songs from Barbie up for the big award, and neither of them is “Dance The Night,” the Dua Lipa banger that served as that soundtrack’s biggest hit. Instead, the nominated Barbie songs are Billie Eilish’s ballad “What Was I Made For?” and Ryan Gosling’s absurdist dream-ballet banger “I’m Just Ken.” Since it’s a songwriters’ award, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas are up for “What Was I Made For?,” while Mark Ronson and Miike Snow singer Andrew Wyatt are nominated for “I’m Just Ken.” All of them are past winners. Eilish and Finneas won for the James Bond song “No Time To Die,” while Ronson and Wyatt both helped write Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s “Shallow,” from A Star Is Born. (Speaking of Bradley Cooper, he’s nominated for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay for Maestro, but he didn’t get a Best Director nod.)

Human awards magnet Jon Batiste is also nominated along with Dan Wilson for Best Original Song for “It Never Went Away,” from the documentary American Symphony. (Batiste previously won Best Original Score for the Pixar movie Soul; he shared that award with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.) Scott George, who served as music consultant and played the head tribal singer at the end of Killers Of The Flower Moon, is nominated for writing the Osage Tribal Singers’ “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People).”

Perennial Oscar nominee Diane Warren is in there, too. She wrote Becky G’s “A Fire Inside,” which apparently was the end credits song from Flamin’ Hot, the Hulu movie that told a fanciful fictional tale about the creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. This is the 15th time that Warren has been nominated for Best Original Song, which merely extends her record. She’s never won, and she won’t win this year. (Warren was given an honorary Oscar in 2022, which hopefully takes some of the sting out.)

The late Robbie Robertson, who passed away last year, has been posthumously nominated for scoring his old friend Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon. It’s Robertson’s first Oscar nomination. He’s up against John Williams for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, Ludwig Göransson for Oppenheimer, Laura Karpman for American Fiction, and Black Midi collaborator Jerskin Fendrix for Poor Things. John Williams already has five Oscars, and Ludwig Göransson has one.

As far as the music awards go, I’m put my money on “I’m Just Ken” and Ludwig Göransson. I’d also be remiss not to mention that Jonathan Glazer — who, in a previous life, directed some truly classic music videos for people like Radiohead, Jamiroquai, and UNKLE — is a surprise double-nominee, up for both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for The Zone Of Interest. You can see the full list of this year’s Oscar nominees here. The ceremony goes down 3/10.