The 2025 Oscars won’t feature any live performances of the Best Original Song nominees, so it looks like the Academy isn’t even trying to rival last year’s rousing rendition of “I’m Just Ken.” The 2025 Oscar nominations were announced last week with a few surprises, from James Mangold’s Best Director nod to Daniel Craig’s Best Actor snub. The nominees for Best Original Song are “Never Too Late” from Elton John: Never Too Late, “Like a Bird” from Sing Sing, “The Journey” from The Six Triple Eight, and “El Mal” and “Mi Camino” from Emilia Pérez.
Last year, Billie Eilish’s Best Original Song win for her Barbie track, “What Was I Made For?,” made her the youngest person ever to win two Oscars (having previously won in the same category for her James Bond theme “No Time to Die”). But the most memorable part of the ceremony involved a different song from Barbie: Ryan Gosling’s riveting live performance of “I’m Just Ken.” Live performances of the Best Original Song nominees are a long-standing tradition of Oscars ceremonies, but the 2025 ceremony won’t feature any.
The 2025 Oscars Won’t Have Performances Of The Best Original Song Nominees
Emilia Pérez’s Soundtrack Won’t Be Performed Live
Live performances of the Best Original Song nominees have been a staple of Oscars ceremonies for years. The tradition of performing the nominated songs started with the 18th Academy Awards in 1946, where such stars as Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Dinah Shore, and Dick Haymes performed. In the early years of Best Original Song performances at the Oscars, the songs weren’t typically performed by the original artists who recorded them for their respective films. In 1965, for example, all the nominated songs were performed by Robert Goulet.
The 97th Academy Awards will be held on March 2, 2025.
Since this tradition was introduced, there have only been three Oscars ceremonies in which the Best Original Song nominees were not performed. No Best Original Song nominees were performed at the 1989 ceremony, the 2010 ceremony, or the 2012 ceremony, where there were just two nominees: “Real in Rio” from Rio and “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets. The Academy has confirmed that there won’t be any Best Original Song performances this year, either, so the 2025 Oscars will be just the fourth ceremony not to feature performances of any Best Original Song contenders.
Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” Performance In 2024 Proved How Great This Segment Can Be
It Was The Highlight Of The 2024 Oscars Ceremony
During the 2024 Oscars ceremony, Gosling burst onto the stage in a pink suit and performed his signature Barbie song, “I’m Just Ken.” The performance was an elaborate homage to the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number from the classic 1953 Marilyn Monroe movie musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the choreography of Busby Berkeley. Gosling was joined on-stage by the song’s composers — Mark Ronson on bass and Andrew Wyatt on piano — as well as Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen on guitar. Gosling’s co-stars Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Scott Evans all appeared on-stage, too.
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Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” performance at the 2024 Oscars ceremony was a clear reminder of what made the movie great — and why he needs a spinoff.
Everything about this performance, from Gosling’s mesmerizing stage presence to Slash’s surprise appearance to the choreography by La La Land’s Mandy Moore, was spectacular. Gosling even went into the crowd and involved the film’s star and producer, Margot Robbie, and its director and co-writer, Greta Gerwig, in the vocals. “I’m Just Ken” was arguably the highlight of the entire 2024 ceremony. It would be almost impossible to top, so the Academy may be wise to avoid competing with it by removing Best Original Song performances from the 2025 ceremony.
Not Having Performances Of 2025’s Best Original Song Oscar Nominees May Be For The Best
“I’m Just Ken” Couldn’t Be Topped
The Academy may have made the right call by cutting the Best Original Song performances from the 2025 ceremony. It would be very difficult to top last year’s “I’m Just Ken” performance — especially with the list of nominees for this year; if Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were among the nominees and could perform a song from Wicked, like the incredible “Defying Gravity” track that people held space for, that would be a different story. But the songs in Wicked previously appeared in the Broadway musical, so they don’t qualify as original compositions.
The big original Oscar-nominated musical of the year is Emilia Pérez, with two nominated songs to choose from, but that movie has been a firestorm of controversy for its inauthentic portrayal of Mexican culture and the trans experience.
None of the 2025 nominees have broken out and become a cultural phenomenon the way “I’m Just Ken” did last year. The big original Oscar-nominated musical of the year is Emilia Pérez, with two nominated songs to choose from, but that movie has been a firestorm of controversy for its inauthentic portrayal of Mexican culture and the trans experience. The less stage time there is for the nominees, the more stage time there is for the 2025 Oscars ceremony’s host, Conan O’Brien, which is always a good thing.
Oscars
- Location
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Los Angeles, CA
- Dates
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March 2, 2025
- Website
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https://www.oscars.org/