The winner of the 2007 Oscar for Best Song went to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for Falling Slowly from the film Once. It's perfectly integrated into the film and marks the first moment in the film where a palpable emotional connection is made between the two characters. As it should be for a Best Song winner it is truly a part of the movie, a part of the story, a part of the characters. The same can be said for the other four nominees of 2007. All integrally part of the film.
But it wasn't always that way.
Sure that's how it started out in the thirties but by the sixties musicals were starting to fail at the box office and thus by the seventies began the advent of the Closing Credit Song winner. That's the song that has nothing to do with the film (except perhaps managing to mention the film's title in its lyrics) that plays over the closing credits. For almost two decades this was the lot of most of the winners of Best Song. These were the dark years for the category and it was 
Disney, of all studios, not MGM, the former Musical clearinghouse, that brought the category back to reality. But for two short glorious decades Best Song meant absolutely nothing to the filmmakers themselves. The songwriters weren't a part of the process of making the film. They were hired almost as an afterthought to give those folks who stay through the credits something to listen to.
It all started in the mid to late sixties with opening or closing credit winners such as Windmills of Your Mind and Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head* winning for The Thomas Crown Affair and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid respectively. Then came the uber-cool Isaac Hayes (The Duke of New York) singing Shaft for the non-musical Shaft, the movie. As a result, producers started hiring top musical performers to record songs for the credits. After all, now it was possible for a non-musical to win in this area, but more importantly, it meant you could make a low-budget movie with no expensive stars or special effects and still come home a winner.
The seventies and eighties saw many decidedly non-musical movies take home the Oscar for Best Song including The Towering Inferno (We May Never Love Like This Again), Norma Rae (It Goes Like It Goes), An Officer and a Gentleman (Up Where We Belong) and Top Gun (Take My Breath Away). But the nadir of this period for me has always been Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) from Arthur. It was written (in part) and performed by Christopher Cross and if there were some way to UN-hear this song I would. I'd pay good money to have it's musical memory erased from my brain. But, alas, I cannot. I have 
heard it as did millions of others... and it won an Oscar.
Since The Little Mermaid revived the musical in the animated world and then later films like Moulin Rouge revived the musical in the live action world the Best Song Oscar has usually gone to a song integral to the film with a few closing credit exceptions popping up from time to time (Philadelphia from the movie of the same name, My Heart Will Go On from Titanic). Gone is the short-lived era of the Closing Credit Song winner.
And I say - Bring it BACK!
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't want to eliminate the real category. I want a new category created for Best End Credits Song. If they can have two screenplay categories and four acting 
categories then by God they can have two Best Song categories. I realize major problems could arise from this. For instance, no one but no one wants to see ten songs performed at the Oscars. Thus, I would propose a new rule that states only snippets of each song will be played as the nominees are read (See, it would actually help the broadcast to create this new category).
And of course, there's the real risk that another Arthur's Theme will pop up but that's a chance I'm willing to take because the Closing Credit Song has brought home Oscars to Donna Summer, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Isaac Hayes. And folks, none of them are going to be in a Disney musical anytime soon. We need a category that will help the future Donnas and Bruces and Bobs and Isaacs bring home their Oscar too. We need the Best End Credit Song Oscar and we need it now. Isn't it time we gave credit where end credit is due?
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*This would more accurately be dubbed a "montage song", the forerunner to the music video, as it appears in the movie as background music while those crazy kids ride around on that bike.
