Who’s Tanking Lana Del Rey’s Oscar Bid?
Lana Del Rey will not win an Oscar in January, if one of her anonymous detractors has anything to do with it. Earlier this week, the singer’s The Great Gatsby soundtrack contribution “Young and Beautiful” made it onto the Academy’s 75-song long list as a contender for one of at least five Best Original Song nominees.
However, Deadline reports through an unnamed source that someone has been mailing the Academy music committee letters claiming the song had been disqualified. It includes a printout of an article, with an attribution to Variety, claiming that “Young and Beautiful” didn’t make the cut because the movie had changed release dates. No such article exists in Variety or anywhere else, apparently.
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Deadline‘s insiders claim they’ve made no headway in figuring out who it is sending the letters. The movie’s studio, Warner Bros., and soundtrack record label, Interscope, are attempting to educate Academy voters that Del Rey is still in the running. Warner Bros. is reportedly recutting a music featurette for voters so that it will specifically highlight Del Rey’s song within the movie, among the many other songs from Warner Bros. movies that are up for nomination.
Sabotage aside, the song has lived on outside of Gatsby’s mansion. In October, the label released a remix of the track by Cedric Gervais, whose remix of Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” became a big hit in October. “I’m a huge fan of Lana Del Rey’s music,” Gervais said of the “Young and Beautiful” remix. “Her voice is amazing and I built an entirely new instrumental around the vocal. It’s killer for the dance floor but also something that sounds great in the car.”
In other Del Rey cinema news, the singer recently starred in her own short film Tropico, which came out earlier this month. At the Los Angeles premiere for the movie, Del Rey announced that she is working on a new record titled Ultra-Violence, despite previous reports that she had a “very fickle” muse. “I really just wanted us all to be together so I could try and visually close out my chapter before I release the new record,” she said at the event.