The song is precious, witty, and actually relates smartly to the film in which it resides. The sole exception is the title cut that opens the film, a zippy bit of retro goodness recorded by Rachel Sweet, a diminutive singer who knew her way around an oldie. That poppy perfection includes the music, most of which is assembled from the vintage Tune Tote 45 RPM case in the Baltimore filmmaker’s beauteous brain. The most durable and pliable of John Waters’s cinematic creations, Hairspray is grand in every way. There might have been a shortage of treacly ballads penned by Diane Warren or other default favorites of the Academy’s music branch, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t other gems written directly for the screen. There was even some talk of scrapping the category altogether, even though much of the nineteen-eighties had been a boom time for movie soundtracks, with enormous hits going on to become Oscar winners.Īnd anyway, the real problem with the category was that the voters weren’t looking hard enough.
Only three songs were nominated, and one of them was a thoroughly unremarkable (and little-known) wisp of nothing from the minor indie hit Bagdad Cafe. When it came time to hand out Oscar nominations for the 1988 movie year, Academy members were so dismayed by the compositions eligible for the Best Original Song category that they reduced the number of contenders by forty percent.
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