Barbie kicked off the night in style at the Grammys, with a big performance by Dua Lipa. Then, the first major award, Song of the Year, went to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?.” The latter is a songwriters award, going to Eilish (full name Billie Eilish O’Connell) and her brother Finneas O’Connell (a.k.a. FINNEAS). This song also won Best Song Written For Visual Media.
“What Was I Made For?” is also up for the Academy Award for Best Song. This win bodes well for that ceremony. Eilish and O’Connell have already won one Oscar for “No Time To Die,” the theme song to the James Bond/007 film.
Eilish and O’Connell performed the song on the telecast. This win marks her seventh Grammy and his eighth.
The Barbie soundtrack also won Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media, going to producers Brandon Davis, Mark Ronson & Kevin Weaver, and music supervisor George Drakoulias.
“What Was I Made For?” beat Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” for Song of the Year. Since the latter was nominated, it was enough for the Grammys to invite Lipa to not just perform but to open the show. However, the technicality is that performers only have to perform a bit of the song they are actually nominated for. Lipa only included a snippet of “Dance the Night” in between two new songs from her upcoming album, “Houdini” and “Training Season.”
The other big winners for the night included Taylor Swift who nabbed Album of the Year for Midnights (and took the opportunity to plug her new album The Tortured Poets Department), and Best Pop Vocal Album. Miley Cyrus performed her hit song “Flowers” for the first time on television and scored Record of the Year, which is a producers award, and Best Solo Vocal Performance, marking her first Grammy win ever.
“What Was I Made For?” is nominated for the Oscar for Best Song opposite Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” as well as “The Fire Inside” from Flaming Hot, “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony, and “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon.
The Grammys and the Oscars are completely different. The Grammys are meant to celebrate music and the Oscars to celebrate film. But the wins for “What Was I Made For?” make its chances at the Academy Awards much better.
What was your favorite song from a movie this year?
