Oscar's Best Song Battle: Pharrell, U2, Karen O & 'Frozen' Fight for Academy Awards Gold

Pharrell has a No. 2 hit, the "Frozen" soundtrack reached No. 1, Karen O is the indie ‘It’ girl and U2 is... just cool. The Academy’s sleepy little Best Original Song category turns shockingly competitive and surprisingly commercial as the nominees open up about what they wrote — and what’s at stake.

JUMP TO THE BEST SONG NOMINEE PROFILES:
PHARRELL WILLIAMS | KAREN O & SPIKE JONZE
U2 | FROZEN's K. & R. LOPEZ

This Cover Story First Appeared in Billboard Magazine -- Click to Buy This Issue
• Subscribe • Buy a Copy • Billboard on iPad

Just two years ago, the Academy Awards telecast didn't feature a song performance — perhaps producers thought better of having a furry puppet croon "Man or Muppet." This year, the broadcast will showcase a contest as competitive as any best picture race, and less traditional to boot. How do you top "Frozen"'s soaring, kid-friendly ballad? Sing atop Rockefeller Center on Jimmy Fallon's first "Tonight Show." Or even better: Wear a hat that even Arby's tweets about.

If you're keeping score, the Oscars (airing on March 2) haven't seen this much pop music relevance since 1984, when all five nominees hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 and Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You" won. The last time it came close was when Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" lost to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey's "When You Believe."

But this year, the "Frozen" frontrunner is from an album that spent four weeks at No. 1, while "Despicable Me 2"'s "Happy" is currently No. 2 on the Hot 100. How did U2, Pharrell Williams, Karen O and composers Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez come to lead the hippest Oscar song pack in decades? The negative attention that the best song category drew two years ago (and which returned this year with the disqualification of "Alone Yet Not Alone" due to campaign rule vio- lations) is part of the answer, and the Academy's music branch has since revised its scoring system to allow in the top five vote-getters from the 240 members who determine the nomi- nees. (All of the nearly 6,000 voting members vote on the song and score.)

That resulted in a field led by Adele's James Bond theme, "Skyfall," which saw a post-win bump of 88 percent the week following. Her performance on the telecast was among the most heavily promoted, and that draw will be upped this year, too, when U2, Karen O and Idina Menzel, singing "Frozen"'s "Let It Go," take the stage. Williams has the most to gain, though, as his album "GIRL" will be released on March 3 "to take advantage of the Oscars' global spotlight," says Columbia Records senior vp marketing Scott Greer.

It's an honor just to be nominated, but one awards strategist asks, "When did winning best song become so meaningful and to whom and why?" The answer, and the stories behind the campaigns to bring home the Oscar gold, are in the pages that follow.

JUMP TO THE BEST SONG NOMINEE PROFILES:
PHARRELL WILLIAMS | KAREN O & SPIKE JONZE
U2 | FROZEN's K. & R. LOPEZ