Sting, Costello Chase Oscar

Sting, Elvis Costello and Annie Lennox are among those nominated for Best Original Song at the seventy-sixth annual Academy Awards.

Cold Mountain received a pair of nominations in category, Sting's "You Will Be My Ain True Love" and the Elvis Costello, T Bone Burnett co-write "The Scarlet Tide." Both songs were performed for the film by bluegrass star Alison Krauss.

After reading the Charles Frazier novel, Sting contacted Burnett (who produced the Cold Mountain soundtrack) to ask if he could contribute a song. "I wrote it for a woman," Sting said. "I was trying to sing it, but I couldn't do it. So it was great to hear this perfect voice translate my words."

Also nominated was "Into the West," which Lennox sang in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and co-wrote with Fran Walsh and Howard Shore. On Sunday night, "Into the West" won Best Original Song at the Golden Globe Awards.

Michael McKean and Annette O'Toole's "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" (from A Mighty Wind) and Benoit Charest and Sylvain Chomet's "The Triplets of Belleville" (from the film of the same name) round out the Best Song Oscar nominees.

Shore's work on Rings also earned him a nomination for Best Original Score, where he'll be up against Danny Elfman (Big Fish), James Horner's House of Sand and Fog, Gabriel Yared (Cold Mountain) and Thomas Newman (Finding Newman).

The Academy Awards will take place February 29th at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

More Song Stories entries »

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