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    The 2021 Oscars' Best Original Song Nominees, Cruelly Ranked

    This year's choices include Diane Warren's 12th Oscar nomination, a show-stopper from Eurovision Song Contest and three entries in a subgenre we call "Glorycore."
    by Stephen Thompson Apr 21, 2021 5 minutes
    <em>Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga </em>pushes pageantry over the top while still generating material that would thrive on a real-life Eurovision stage.

    It's been an unusual year for... a lot of things, really, so why should the Oscars be any different? But the category of best original song feels especially anomalous, given the way the pandemic forced the postponement of so many blockbusters: We didn't get a Frozen-style animated musical to lock down one of the spots by default (and Christina Aguilera's new song from the live-action Mulan remake didn't make the cut), while Billie Eilish's James Bond theme might have been the frontrunner had No Time to Die actually come out as planned.

    That's left more room than usual for somber closing-credits dirges reflecting the themes of dramas about the pursuit of social justice — songs that, over the years, tend to bleed together in our collective memory called "I Will Speak and Raise My Voice to Rise and Stand and Fight." These songs, following a path blazed by Common and John Legend's 2014 anthem "," form a subgenre best described as, well, Glorycore. Speak! Rise! Stand! Fight!

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