Oscars Drop Original Song Performances from Ceremony

Kermit the Frog, Jason Segel and Miss Piggy in 'The Muppets.'

Andrew Macpherson © The Muppets Studio, LLC

This year's Academy Awards ceremony will skip performances of the songs nominated for Best Original Song, a tradition of the annual telecast. Deadline Hollywood reports that both Fox and Disney, the studios behind the two nominated songs from Rio and The Muppets, have formally protested the decision to drop musical performances, but have been shot down.

Only "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets and "Real In Rio" from Rio were nominated in the category this year, largely as a result of a complicated voting process in which Academy members gave number rankings to a shortlist of 39 songs.

Though this decision means the show will skip the opportunity to include a large-scale performance number featuring the Muppets, it will potentially yield a shorter show and give more space in the broadcast for the ceremony's musical consultants, Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer, to do their thing.

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter