This week Scoreboard takes a look at the music categories at the Academy Awards
Billboard Artist Top 10
For the magazine dated March 3, 2018
See the full chart at http://www.billboard.com/charts/artist-100
| Billboard Artist Top 10 | Name | Billboard 200 Album Rank | Billboard Hot 100 Singles | Highest Charting Single |
| 1 | Drake | 24 | 3 | 1: God’s Plan |
| 2 | Ed Sheeran | 7 | 4 | 2: Perfect (Remix) |
| 3 | Kendrick Lamar | 8 | 6 | 7: All The Stars |
| 4 | Imagine Dragons | 13 | 2 | 16: Thunder |
| 5 | Bruno Mars | 11 | 1 | 3: Finesse (Remix) |
| 6 | Justin Timberlake | 6 | 1 | 30: Say Something |
| 7 | Migos | 2 | 6 | 10: Stir Fry |
| 8 | Cardi B | – | 6 | 3: Finesse (Remix) |
| 9 | Post Malone | 9 | 4 | 6: Rockstar |
| 10 | Camila Cabello | 12 | 2 | 4: Havana |
There is limited change on top of major Billboard charts this week. On the Hot 100 Drake is #1 with “God’s Plan,” which has led the chart for five weeks. @champagnepapi also enters the top 5 with “Look Alive,” a BlocBoy JB collaboration that Scoreboard spotlighted last week. These chart moves return Drake to #1 on the Artist 100 for the first time since April 2017. The #1 album in the country remains Black Panther: The Album, which has songs from and inspired by the biggest film of the year. It’s appropriate that the #1 album during Oscars week is a soundtrack. Since start of 2017, soundtracks to Moana, La La Land, and Beauty And The Beast made the top three of the Billboard 200, while soundtracks to Fifty Shades Darker, The Greatest Showman, and Black Panther went to #1. Music always had a complementary relationship with movies and this week Scoreboard focuses on the music categories at the Academy Awards.
Drake gets a big thank U from University of Miami, where he filmed “God’s Plan” music video
Meet The Oscar Contenders
There are a total of 24 Academy Awards handed out every year, a smaller number than the 84 Grammy Awards that were handed out five weeks ago. When it comes to sound, there are four Oscars for the taking – technical awards for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing and awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song. The contenders in the former category are Star Wars: Last Jedi and Best Picture nominated films Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, The Shape Of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The last time the Best Picture also won Best Score was The Artist in 2011. According to British gambling markets, The Shape Of Water is the favorite for Best Original Score, but it is trailing Three Billboards in the odds to win Best Picture tonight.
Then there’s the Best Original Song award, a competitive category that has roared back into relevance after only two songs were nominated in 2011 (Bret McKenzie, of Flight Of The Conchords, won that year for the humorous “Man Or Muppet” from The Muppets). Last year, La La Land had two songs in the running for the same award and won for “City Of Stars.” The film also won Best Original Score, and was mistakenly announced as Best Picture by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway after an envelope snafu (true winner was Moonlight). Among this year’s competitors, La La Land lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are back with “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman, which already won a Golden Globe and helped the soundtrack take #1 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year. If Pasek and Paul win tonight, they would be first back-to-back Oscar winners in this category since Alan Menken took Academy Awards home for Beauty And The Beast and Aladdin in the early 1990s.
“This Is Me” is the only Oscar-nominated song to make the Billboard Hot 100, it peaked at #58
Pasek and Paul are joined in competition by husband and wife Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who are most famous for their work on the Frozen soundtrack, which got them an Oscar for “Let It Go” four years ago. This time they are back on the soundtrack to Pixar’s Coco with the song “Remember Me,” performed by Benjamin Bratt in the film and by Miguel and Natalia LaFourcade on the radio mix. “Remember Me” has not had the ubiquity of “Let It Go,” but the crowd-pleasing nature of Coco is persuading oddsmakers to place the song ahead of “This Is Me” as the front-runner to win tonight.
Three years ago Common took the Best Original Song Award home with John Legend for “Glory” from Selma. This year he is back with Andra Day on “Stand Up For Something” from Marshall, a historical drama about Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall is not the only film in the category when it comes to history of Civil Rights. Netflix drama Mudbound is represented by Mary J. Blige‘s “Mighty River.” Blige also acted in Mudbound and is nominated for Best Supporting Actress. These are the first two Oscar nominations for the Queen of R&B, who has won nine Grammys over her long and illustrious career.
Mary J. Blige released “MJB Da MVP” back in 2006; 12 years later she is nominated for two Oscars
The category has three former Oscar winners (for 2013, 2014, and 2016) and @therealmaryjblige. Yet the four films are NOT nominated for Best Picture; the fifth one is. The film is Call Me By Your Name, a coming-of-age drama by Italy’s Luca Guadagnino and the song is “Mystery Of Love” by indie veteran Sufjan Stevens. Like MJB, Stevens is an Oscars rookie, he has never even been nominated for a Grammy despite having a massive fanbase. If Academy voters did not bother to catch Coco, Marshall, Mudcrutch, or The Greatest Showman, then Stevens might go home tonight with a major Oscars upset. Check out all the songs below and watch the Awards tonight to see who wins:
