City of Stars wins Oscar

Lin Manuel Miranda’s sensational Broadway show, Hamilton, may be selling $10,000 from scalpers in New York these days. But this oversupply of luck proved to be no match for the charms of the City of Los Angeles and its population of dreamers depicted with so much love and sensitivity in La La Land. Miranda’s inspiring composition, How Far I’ll Go for the Disney animated movie Moana, was one of the nominated songs at the 89th Academy Awards held last Feb. 26 in Hollywood. But his song lost to the dreamy ballad City of Stars from the musical La La Land.

But no matter, it was a nice debut at the Oscars for Miranda, who I am sure will be nominated again in the future. Besides, it was nice that he brought a touch of rap to the proceedings when he did a prologue for his song which was performed by 16-year-old Auli’I Cravalho. Watch out for this girl. Pretty with a stunning voice, I am sure bigger things are ahead for her. She was simply oozing with sweet innocence and star quality throughout her number.

Meanwhile, also nominated at the Academy Awards was Can’t Stop The Feeling from Trolls. It was performed by songwriter Justin Timberlake and it made for an excellent opening number for the awards night. His song put everybody in a happy, dancing, expectant mood. It was no wonder the atmosphere in the show was so upbeat throughout until those last few flabbergasting minutes. But no matter, JT can now put Academy Award Best Song nominee in his resume.

Another nominee who came to sing his own composition was rock star Sting. This was the moving The Empty Chair from Jim: The James Foley Story. This picture is a documentary about the life of the American photojournalist James Foley. He was kidnapped and later beheaded by ISIS extremists while he was covering the war in Syria in 2014. This was Sting’s fourth time as a Best Song nominee at the Oscars. He was previously nominated for My Funny Friend And Me from The Emperor’s New Groove, Until… from Kate and Leopold and You Will Be My Ain True Love from Cold Mountain.

And then there was that other song from the soundtrack of La La Land, Audition (The Fools Who Dream) also composed by Justin Hurwitz with lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Now I believe that even if City Of Stars had not been nominated, the Best Song Award would have still gone to La La Land because of Audition. The touching song, which was performed in the picture by leading lady Emma Stone, tells of fools and dreamers in pursuit of stardom.

There are a lot of people like that among the Academy voters. Some of them passed that important audition and were there looking their glamorous best at the Dolby Theater on Oscar night. But there are more outside who did not and they are the ones who can surely relate to the fools and dreamers mentioned in the song. Audition plus City Of Stars were performed as a medley by John Legend, who appeared as Ryan Gosling’s jazz musician friend in La La Land.

 Aside from the nominees, the only other musical number of the evening was in the In Memoriam portion where the Academy paid tribute to its departed members. Sara Barreiles’ gorgeous alto sang the Joni Mitchell classic Both Sides Now from the ’60s, surely one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I was tempted to say that they do not make songs like that anymore. But then I thought of La La Land and this year’s fine batch of song nominees at the Oscars and I can honestly say that movie music is getting better.

Meanwhile, do not be surprised if you hear another version of City Of Stars these coming days. The song was recently recorded by Rez Toledo, and the pretty singer and songwriter Nicole Asensio. Toledo was all the rage a few years ago when he was known as the electronic music hitmaker Someday Dream. He scored big with the Hey Daydreamer song, but suddenly disappeared for unknown reasons. Well, it looks like he is now ready for his comeback and Nicole is with him.