CAIRO - Are you still here? Good! Last week we were talking about Academy Award winning songs over the past decades. We covered three decades and, as promised, let's continue till we reach this year. Let me remind you that due to space limitation we can't mention all winning songs. We will start with the 1980s. Definitely music then was beginning to sound similar to what we know today. Still we can't review each and every winner, so we will choose some of them… or rather many. The 1981 winner simply expresses the dream of every unknown talented person – Irene Cara's ‘Fame'. It was taken from a movie with the same name about students at an arts academy with all their hopes and dreams. ‘Fame' was so successful that it was turned into a TV serial in 1982 and the title song topped the charts again at the time. Christopher Cross co-wrote ‘Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)' with two legendary songwriters, Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, as well as Peter Allen, but sang it alone and won the Academy Award with it in 1982. In the following year Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes won and inspired everyone with the timeless ‘Up Where We Belong' from the motion picture ‘An Officer and a Gentleman', which was Richard Gere's big break on the silver screen. Break dancing was a big thing in that decade which must have helped in making the movie ‘Flashdance' very popular and in 1984 ‘Flashdance... What a Feeling' won the award. It was sung and co-written by Irene Cara and the music was composed by legendary composer Giorgio Moroder. Some artists become legends and others truly deserve the title ‘genius' and definitely one of them is Stevie Wonder, whose hit ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You' won the Oscar in 1985. Another star who was hugely popular at the time is Lionel Richie, who seemed to be confused… why else would anyone call a song ‘Say You, Say Me'? Regardless of the reason, it got him an Academy Award in 1986. I wish I could be confused in the same way! Giorgio Moroder? Again? Yes because he composed the 1987 winner ‘Take My Breath Away', which was performed by an American band called Berlin! This is just like Egyptian musicians forming a band and naming it Moscow! Anyway, that track was taken from the movie ‘Top Gun', which made Tom Cruise really popular. Another movie about dancing is ‘Dirty Dancing' and 1988's winning song ‘(I've Had) The Time of My Life' was the one they used for the main dance. The track was by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. So it's Jennifer again. But who is Bill? He's one half of the duo the Righteous Brothers, who were not brothers in the first place! Anyway, the duo's 1964 hit was featured decades later in ‘Top Gun'. As for their 1965 hit ‘Unchained Melody' it was featured in another blockbuster – 1990s' ‘Ghost', starring Patrick Swayze, who was also the star of ‘Dirty Dancing'. The 1980s' final winner was singer/songwriter Carly Simon with her song ‘Let the River Run' taken from a film all about a ‘Working Girl'. Carly of course is an iconic artist who has written many hits including ‘You're So Vain', which was supposedly about... Warren Beatty, who was the star of the 1990 movie ‘Dick Tracy', along with Madonna, whose song ‘Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)' from that movie, was the 1991 winner. In the following year that couple had the title track of an animated movie named after them – ‘Beatty and the Beast'. N-one knew that Madonna was officially called a ‘beast' until they announced the 1992 awards. Oops… I guess I got it all wrong because it was ‘Beauty and the Beast' by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson. The same man, Peabo, won again in 1993 for his duet ‘A Whole New World' from another animated film – ‘Aladdin'. Again it was a duet but this time with Regina Belle. In 1994 a real rocker won – Bruce (the Boss) Springsteen with ‘Streets of Philadelphia', from what was considered as a revolutionary film at the time because it discussed AIDS. That movie, ‘Philadelphia', starred two exceptionally talented actors, Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Sir Elton John was the 1995 winner for ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight?', which was of course taken from the brilliant ‘The Lion King'. An animation was followed by another, which means that in 1996 it was a song from a cartoon again – ‘Colours of the Wind' from ‘Pocahontas'. Have I told you that it was sung by former Miss America Vanessa Williams? She's still gorgeous. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Madonna. You can keep her if you want, because she's not much of a singer anyway. However, one must be honest – when she sang in ‘Evita', in which she also played the lead role, Madonna did a very good job. The reason is simple… she took voice lessons! Seriously, she did, and the result was impressive. Madonna also won the Oscar in 1997 for ‘You Must Love Me' from that movie. No promises, but I will try to love you! The 1998 awards unleashed Celine Dion's voice on the world with ‘My Heart Will Go On' from ‘Titanic'. The ship sunk ages ago but Celine's song is still played here and there… It should have been called ‘My Song Will Go On'. Thank Celine… you may ‘go on back to your house' now. Although Celine is a brilliant singer, her singing style is boring. Unlike the exceptional Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston who joined forces to sing the 1999 winner ‘When You Believe' from ‘The Prince of Egypt', which is an animated movie… Just like ‘Tarzan', which included the following year's winner ‘You'll Be in My Heart' by rocker Phil Collins… good on you Phil! The year 2001 saw another rocker grabbing the award – the renowned songwriter Bob Dylan for ‘Things Have Changed' from ‘Wonder Boys'. I ‘wonder' if Eminem was the first rapper to win an Oscar? I guess so. He did in 2003 for ‘Lose Yourself' from the movie ‘8 Mile', which he starred in. Six years later an Indian track was the winner – ‘Jai Ho' from ‘Slumdog Millionaire'. The song was performed by Sukhwinder Singh, Tanvi Shah, Mahalakshmi Iyer and Vijay Prakash. Last month, as you probably still remember, Jason Segel, Peter Linz, Bill Barretta and Jim Parsons won for ‘Man or Muppet' from ‘The Muppets', starring my sweetheart… Miss Piggy… Don't send me any emails this week… I will go on a long vacation for at least 47 minutes.
