Mary J. Blige is the most successful female R’n’B/Hip-Hop artist of the last 25 years. A nine-time Grammy Award winner, she’s sold some 75m records worldwide. Her previous films have included I Can Do Bad All By Myself and Rock Of Ages and she received a Golden Globe nomination for her music contribution in The Help.
Her song, ‘Mighty River’, is the theme to ‘Mudbound’, which has also been nominated for Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography. She faces competition from Sufjan Stevens (‘Mystery Of Love’ from Call My Name) among others.
“This is a new one, the actress nominee, and this is beautiful. This is really special,” she told Billboard. “So is the song because it’s something that I love to do. I love to sing. And that’s something I’ve been doing for a very long time that’s special to me, and the Oscars have recognized it. So it’s all special.”
Elsewhere at the Academy Awards, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has been nominated for Best Original Score for Phantom Thread, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis and is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s his first Oscar nomination.
Fans will recall that Greenwood has worked with Anderson and Day-Lewis before on 2008’s There Will Be Blood. Despite much buzz surrounding the film, the score was deemed ineligible for an Oscar after the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided “the majority of the music [on the score] was not composed specifically for the film.”
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