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The Hunting Ground

A week from Sunday at the Academy Awards, one of Hollywood’s greatest stars may finally bring home that Oscar statue that has thus far proved so elusive. After garnering more nominations than can be counted on one hand, it may finally be time to walk up to the podium and accept that much-deserved reward. Leonardo DiCaprio? Nope. Obviously we’re talking about Diane Warren, whose 8th nomination for songwriting may finally be the charm. Or at least it damn well better be.

Warren’s nomination this year — shared with Lady Gaga — is for writing the song “Til It Happens To You” from the campus-rape documentary The Hunting Ground. It’s a solid nominee from a very good film, but it’s not at all what you’d have thought Diane Warren would win her Oscar for back when she was racking up five nominations in six years from 1996 to 2001, for power ballads like “How Do I Live” and “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing.” Whatever you may think of those songs, they’re the ones that are most representative of Warren’s her career, and whether or not she finally wins this year, they’ll be the ones that have defined her career.

Diane Warren, not to put to fine a point on it, is the go-to songwriter for bombastic schmaltz in Hollywood. Not that she’s written all her songs for films, of course. But all her songs — she’s been a hit-maker for Cher, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, and many more — have a kind of inherent sense of drama to them that is very cinematic. Her songs are almost never cool, but they have a great way of enduring long past their era. Take, for example, Warren’s very first Oscar nomination in 1987, for co-writing “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from the film Mannequin. Far fewer people remember the movie than remember the song, which was resurrected as recently as The Skeleton Twins last year.

When you look at the songs Warren has written, it’s actually crazy she’s never won an Oscar before. Her other six nominations were for, in order:

“Because You Loved Me,” from Up Close & Personal in 1996. SHOULD HAVE WON. This Celine Dion song was everywhere that year, eclipsing the movie it was in by many orders of magnitude. You may not have liked it, but it was a dominant force. Just like The English Patient, which one Best Picture that year. That year’s winner? “You Must Love Me,” that watery Andrew Lloyd Webber/Madonna ballad that was added to Evita for the film version. Bleh.

“How Do I Live,” from Con-Air in 1997. This song was such a rock-solid pop construction that it was both a pop AND country hit, for LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood, respectively. This indelible pop hit, which set the Billboard record for most consecutive weeks in the top 10, managed to lose to an even bigger hit, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” So we’ll chalk that up to bad timing.

“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon in 1998. SHOULD HAVE WON. The most unlikely alliance of Hollywood hit-makers in the late 1990s was Jerry Bruckheimer and Diane Warren, who teamed up here for the second year in a row for another absolute behemoth of a song. Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” was utterly inescapable, and it is positively baffling that it lost to The Prince of Egypt‘s “When You Believe,” a song that sounds a lot like something Diane Warren would have written if she were really into God.

“Music of My Heart,” from Music of the Heart in 1999. Warren’s fourth consecutive nomination, which, if she were an actor, would have basically made her a lock for the win. Unfortunately, this was the least of her nominated songs, a wafer-thing collaboration between ‘N Sync and Gloria Estefan. It’s still probably better than Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart,” which infamously beat out songs from South Park, Toy Story 2, and Aimee Mann that year.

“There You’ll Be,” from Pearl Harbor in 2001. This Faith Hill ballad might secretly be the most representative of Warren’s nominated songs. At first blush, you hate it; it’s schmaltzy, it’s over-the-top, it’s the empty-calories of power ballads. But the more you hear it, the more that expert songwriting craft burrows into your ears; that brilliant sense of drama sweeps a part of you up in spite of yourself. The song lost out to “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc. in an incredibly weak year for the Best Original Song category. Everybody figured Randy Newman won what was essentially a career Oscar that year. As if Warren didn’t deserve the same thing.

“Grateful,” from Beyond the Lights in 2014. After a 13-year absence, Warren got a bit of a surprise nomination last year for Rita Ora’s song from the under-rewarded Gina Prince-Bythewood film. It’s another one that’s easy to brush off at first blush, but like any good Warren song, it has its moments where its hooks get into you. It probably deserved to lose to “Glory” from Selma, though.

And these are just the songs Warren was nominated for! If you look at her history of writing songs for films, it’s a surprise she didn’t pull in a few nods for songs like …

LeAnn Rimes’ “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” from Coyote Ugly in 2000
Monica’s “For You I Will” from Space Jam in 1996
Edwin McCain’s “I Could Not Ask for More” from Message in a Bottle in 1999
Cher’s “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” from Burlesque in 2010

Hell, even DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night” — perhaps the best Diane Warren song that doesn’t sound anything like a Diane Warren song — came from a film, the 1985 Motown flick The Last Dragon.

This all may be very much not your kind of music. But it is the music that has defined cinema for more than two decades. If Diane Warren doesn’t have an Oscar for writing songs for movies, who really deserves one? All due apologies to Sam Smith and The Weeknd, if anybody but Diane Warren walks away with that Oscar on the 28th, (the music of) my heart will be broken.