The Academy Awards are the biggest night of the year for the film industry, but alongside honoring all the great movies that came out last year, the ceremony also wants to be an entertaining television show that will attract viewers to watch and enjoy the show. As such, the ceremony also includes several moments for entertainment. We often see musical performances, including the performances of Best Original Song nominees. However, for this year’s telecast, there’s good news related to KPop Demon Hunters and Sinners and bad news for the other nominees.
Only “Golden” And “I Lied To You” Will be Performed At The Oscars
The good news is that the nominees from the two most popular films in the category, “Golden” from Kpop Demon Hunters and “I Lied to You” from Sinners, will be performed at the 2026 Oscars. The bad news is that those two are the only nominees that will be performed on the Oscars stage.
The other three, “Dear Me” from the documentary Diane Warren: Relentless, “Sweet Dreams of Joy” by Nicholas Pike from Viva Verdi!, and Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner’s title song from Train Dreams, will, according to a letter sent to nominees obtained by Variety, remain “fully integrated’ into the broadcast, but will not be performed.
The reason, according to the letter, has to do with keeping down the runtime of the broadcast, which is contractually limited to three and a half hours, and other “structural changes” to the telecast.
The Oscars Hasn’t Known What To Do With Best Original Song Category For Years
It’s suggested that performing all five nominees would take up about 25 minutes of the broadcast runtime, which is no small amount, to be sure. And the Oscars are certainly focusing on making sure that the two most well-known songs from the most well-known films are performed. But it is a pretty obvious slight to give time to two of the songs, but not the others.
This is part of an ongoing trend that has seen the Oscars not sure how to handle the Best Original Songs category. While some years have seen all songs performed during the show, last year the ceremony eliminated the Best Original Song performances altogether. Frequently, the people who perform the songs in the films aren’t the people who do so at the Oscars, as it seems the Academy will happily go for a big-name artist if they can get them rather than perform the song as it was done in the movie.
While the performances of the two songs are confirmed, who will be doing the performances is not.
I’m as excited to see “Golden” performed at the Oscars as anybody, but I would love to see all songs get equal treatment. Back in 2019, the Oscars were only going to have a couple of songs performed before eventually letting them all in. Perhaps this year will see a similar backlash and all nominees will get equal time.
