Springsteen wins Golden Globe

It was one of the recent Golden Globe Award’s heartwarming moments. Sting presented the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song From a Motion Picture. The winner was Bruce Springsteen for his song The Wrestler from the movie of the same title. 

Looking dapper in his tux, The Boss accepted his trophy and remarked that it was probably the only time he would ever be nominated for an award alongside actor-director-musician Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood was nominated for the song Grand Torino. He wrote it with son Kyle, Michael Stevens and jazz artist Jamie Cullum, who recorded it for the movie of the same title Eastwood also directed and starred in.

The movie legend is known for occasionally also creating great music for his films. That night he was also up for the Best Original Motion Picture Score for another one of his movies from last year, The Changeling, which stars Angelina Jolie. That trophy went to Bollywood’s Mozart, A. R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire, which was also named Best Picture Drama.

Pardon this aside but I just want you to take note of the fact that India’s Bollywood has invaded mainstream Hollywood. Although it is in truth a Hollywood production with Danny Boyle of Trainspotting at the helm, it is still an Indian story adapted from an Indian novel with Indians in the lead roles and Rahman who also wrote Bombay Dreams doing the music. And mind you Slumdog Millionaire is a strong contender for the Academy Award Best Picture next month.

Back to the music. Nominations for the likes of Springsteen and Eastwood and having Sting as presentor, made Best Song, which is usually considered a minor category in movie awards, particularly important at the Globes. Not only that, this year’s batch of nominees was a truly glittery lot made up of some of the biggest names in pop music. 

Springsteen and Eastwood were up against ex-Genesis Peter Gabriel, who with Thomas Newman composed Down to Earth for the animated film Wall-E; tween queen Miley Cyrus, who must have been up in the clouds over her nomination alongside such stars, for her I Thought I Lost You from the also animated Bolt; and the lovely Beyoncé Knowles for Once in a Lifetime from Cadillac Records where she plays the troubled R&B legend Etta James. 

This is not Springsteen’s first time to win a Golden Globe. He was nominated twice and won once before. He got a nod in 1997 for Dead Man Walking and in 1993 for Philadelphia. The latter gave him a grand slam win from all the other award-giving organizations. 

Philadelphia was composed for the multi-awarded Tom Hanks film of the same title. It was also named Best Song from a Motion Picture at the Academy Awards, the Grammys, the MTV Movie Awards, the Satellite Awards and it was ASCAP’s Most Performed Song from a Motion Picture that same year.

Springsteen excels in writing songs about troubled souls from the dark side of America. Dead Man Walking was about the last days of a killer on death row. Philadelphia was about the travails of a lawyer dying of A.I.D.S. And he found another one of them in The Wrestler.

The film stars Mickey Rourke as an aging wrestler who cannot seem to tear himself away from the mat and the roaring crowd even at the expense of his life and the people he loves. Rourke won the Globe for Best Actor Drama for his work in the film. It was he, who called Springsteen and asked him to write a song.

 Springsteen will release a studio CD of new materials titled Working on a Dream later this month. I don’t know if it includes the gut-hitting The Wrestler. If not, then it might make a good addition later. 

Top 20 titles on Billboard

Thanks largely to the consistently enlarging tween market, 2008 turned out to be a good year for soundtrack albums. Here as per Billboard are the top 20 titles led by the queen herself, Miley Cyrus in the Hannah Montana 2 cum Meet Miley Cyrus soundtracks. 

Others are High School Musical 2; Mamma Mia! Camp Rock; Alvin and the Chipmunks; Juno, High School Musical 3: Senior Year; Hannah Montana; High School Musical; Once; Across the Universe; Hairspray; Enchanted; Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; August Rush; Step Up 2: The Streets; Sex and the City; Into the Wild; Twilight; and A Charlie Brown Christmas.