My Award Nominations: Original Song

It promises to be a slow news week for awards watchers, with little to do but twiddle our thumbs while the number crunchers at PwC determine the nominees who will be announced next Tuesday. So now seems an apt time for me to start running through my own year-in-review rituals. I'll be listing nominations for my personal ballot periodically over the course of the next six weeks, culminating in my Top 20 and my selection of winners the Friday before the Oscars.

It was a stellar year for movie songs (pleasant U-turn from 2015's wasteland), especially thanks to three original musicals providing us with catchy new tunes. Theoretically, I could have filled all five of my Best Original Song slots using any one of them, but in the spirit of spreading the wealth, I made the executive decision to only select a single entry from each. It wouldn't be fair otherwise, especially to some non-musicals with worthy tracks to feast our ears upon.

Here are the final five I've settled on, followed by a longer-than-usual list of second tier contenders: