Forget Barbie,Billie Eilish and Finneas should’ve won an Oscar for this

The general rule of awards shows is that they’re always playing catchup. An artist rarely receives accolades for their best work but rather any passable work after it,once the institutions in question recognise they’ve foolishly missed their best opportunity.

Call it the “Hoo-ah! Effect”,the “we’re sorry,Mr Pacino,we didn’t watchDog Day Afternoon properly in the ’70s because cocaine;here,take this forScent of a Woman.” It’s always embarrassing.

This is how you end up with Martin Scorsese winning his sole Oscar forThe Departed in 2007 whenGoodfellas came out in 1990,or why Spike Lee won his sole Oscar forBlacKkKlansman in 2019 whenDo the Right Thing came out in 1989,or why Miley Cyrus won her first Grammy this year forFlowers when7 Things came out in 2008. These people don’t know what they’re doing. In thewise words of Jay-Z,“at least get it close to right”.

By next month,Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas will have swept the award season’s “songs for movies” categories with their maudlin anthem off theBarbie soundtrack,What Was I Made For?. This year,they’ve already claimed the Golden Globe and the Grammy,and on March 11 – unless Ryan Gosling’s beenpersonally bribing Academy voters – they’ll win the Oscar.

Like I said,everyone’s playing catchup again. Because the truth is Billie and Finneas should have already swept these prizes last year – forNobody Like U,the hit song from Pixar’s pandas-as-puberty movie,Turning Red.

Nobody Like U is never not on my mind. It’s the best song ever featured in a movie,and easily the best song that Billie Eilish and Finneas have ever written or recorded.

Some of you might be partial toBad Guy,some of you might cry yourself to sleep withOcean Eyes. Some of you might be going,“Billie and Finneas already won an Oscar anyway,for the James Bond songNo Time to Die in 2022. Are you just ignoring that fact because it ruins your entire ‘Hoo-ah! Effect theory?’” – to which my reply is:yes,that’s exactly what I’m doing. But also,No Time to Die only won on a technicality because Disney submitted the entirely wrong song fromEncanto (Dos Oruguitas,instead of the obvious choiceWe Don’t Talk About Bruno),so Billie and Finneas shouldn’t have won anyway because the Oscar would have gone to Lin-Manuel Miranda,so my point stands. Look,let’s move on.

In the sort of travesty that history books will frown upon,Billie Eilish has 196 award wins from 417 nominations across her career to date,and none of them were forNobody Like U. It’s the kind of cosmic error that makes my skin crawl.

More than cheap parody,Nobody Like U is a pitch-perfect homage to the Y2K-era boy band music of Backstreet Boys and*NSync,done with genuine appreciation and an attention to detail bordering on the fanatic.

Performed by the fictional Canadian boy band 4*Town – in true turn-of-the-millennium fashion,the band has five members,each adhering to established boy band archetypes:Tae Young,the “cute one”;Jesse,the “artistic one”;Aaron T,the “funny one”;Aaron Z,the “lone wolf”;and Robaire,the “one most likely to go solo” – it features an earworm so hooky that it makes you wonder how the pair also responsible for Barbie’s dirge of existential despair could have come up with it.

There’s so much to love in the song,from the chant-along chorus to its silly proposition to Robaire’s rap verse (“Glendale!” ) to the stuttering effect on the bridge just begging you to dance like JC Chasez. To quote one of the thousands of YouTube comments I’ve bookmarked:“The song is so sensational. If they were a real band,they would’ve been topping the charts now.”

Surprisingly,for a completely fictional band about 20 years removed from their ideal milieu,they almost did. In the US,the song cracked the top 50 on the Billboard Hot 100,and in Australia it became a streaming hit. On YouTube,the song has over 60 million views,which is 53 million views more than 5ive’sSlam Dunk (Da Funk),an original (albeit terrible) song from the actual boy band era.

Everyone knowsNobody Like U is good. Even the untrained ear can recognise its majesty. My three-year-old daughter was barely alive whenTurning Red came out,but it’s still her favourite song afterHop Little Bunnies. “Red panda,” she’ll request during my dinnertime DJ sets,and even though I’m in the middle of a seamless transition from the Magnetic Fields to RXK Nephew,I’ll reply:“Correct,let’s red panda”,and we’ll immediately dance like ravers around our pesto pasta.

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Of course,awards shows always raise their noses at life-affirming popular fare,adhering to the fallacy that there’s something worthier in the dull and serious. But we won’t be fooled.

Because when Billie and Finneas hit that Oscars stage to collect their best original song trophy for Barbie’s saddo ballad,we’ll all remember 4*Town and understand exactly what’s happening. “Hoo-ah,” we’ll whisper at our TV sets,with a resigned shake of the head. “It’s just another hoo-ah.”

Turning Red is in cinemas as part of Pixar Film Fest from February 29 to March 6.

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