While the Emmys are known as television’s highest honor, a number of nominees will be acknowledged for their musical talents during the 2020 Emmy Awards.
The best music and lyrics category honors the best original songs featured on television, with past winners including Saturday Night Live‘s “Come Back Barack,” 13th‘s “Letter To The Free” and last year’s winner, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s “Antidepressants Are So Not A Big Deal.”
This year’s nominees include songs from Euphoria, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Little Fires Everywhere, The Black Godfather, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, This Is Us and Watchmen.
Pharrell Williams, Ingrid Michaelson, Labrinth and Trent Reznor are among the familiar faces that will be competing against each other in the category. The nominated songs range from comedic bits such as Last Week Tonight With John Oliver s “Eat Sh!t, Bob” to more serious numbers like Little Fires Everywhere‘s “Build It Up.”
Read on for more about the songs nominated this year and how they were used during their respective programs.
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"All For Us"
In Euphoria‘s eighth episode and first season finale, Zendaya performs a remix of “All For Us,” originally written, produced and performed by Labrinth for his upcoming studio album.
In the final scene of “And Salt The Earth Behind You,” we see Zendaya’s Rue Bennett slowly rising from a bed and stumbling about her home after having snorted a line of drugs — a decision she makes after backing out of running away with Jules (Hunter Schafer), who’d just confessed to being in love with her.
Rue sings “Too much in my system, money MIA,” she says as she comes into contact with her mother, sister and father. She begins to experience vivid hallucinations, soon envisioning a marching band and choir. She sings “Just for your love / Give you the world / Mona Lisa’s smile” as they lift her up and down. Rue then swirls about a horde dressed similarly to her, and at the end of the song, she watches her own silhouette collapse — leaving the audience wondering if she is dead or alive.
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"Eat Sh!t, Bob"
Satirical musical performances are commonplace on John Oliver’s weekly late-night series. Thus, it’s not surprising one of the show’s most comical songs, Eat Shit, Bob: The Musical, garnered an Emmy nomination.
For a little history, in 2017, coal tycoon Bob Murray sued Last Week Tonight over a segment in which Oliver joked that he looked like a “geriatric Dr. Evil.” The show also arranged for a staff member to dress up in a squirrel costume and deliver the message, “Eat shit, Bob.” Fast forward two years later, and
Oliver explained during a lawsuit-focused episode that Murray’s filing against him had recently been dropped.The host said he believed Murray’s goal wasn’t to win the case, and he characterized it as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation): “The whole point is to put the defendant through a difficult, painful experience.”
Oliver concluded the episode with a musical number. “Even though he’ll threaten legal Armageddon, we have just one tiny thing to say,” he sang. “Bob Murray can go fuck himself today.”
The host introduced the “Suck My Ball, Bob” dancers, who sang about several obviously fictional claims against Murray, including that he spat on the Mona Lisa at The Louvre and that he shot a rocket full of puppies into outer space.
“If we discuss Bob Murray in a way no reasonable person could construe as factual, we can say whatever the fuck we’d like,” said Oliver before he led the dancers out into the street. Once outside, the performers were joined by pedestrians as they continued to make outrageous claims against Murray.
The musical number concluded with the performers taking over Times Square as they enthusiastically sang, “Eat shit, Bob!”
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"Build It Up"
Featured in the season finale of Little Fires Everywhere, the song “Build It Up” was written and sung by Ingrid Michaelson.
The instrumental version of Michaelson’s lilting song is played in the final moments of the finale episode as Pearl (Lexi Underwood) and her mother Mia (Kerry Washington) leave Shaker Heights for good. Elena (Reese Witherspoon) has just witnessed her entire home burned down by her own children and learns her youngest, Izzy (Megan Stott) has run away after a massive fight between the two.
The lyrics encompass Pearl and Izzy’s emotions, serving as a theme for their journey throughout the eight-episode series — “And I know not everybody gets to start over again but I do know what I’m doing with my new life. I’ll build it up. Break it down.”
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"Letter to My Godfather"
Pharrell Williams wrote “Letter to My Godfather” along with his Neptunes producing partner Chad Hugo for Netflix’s original film The Black Godfather, which follows the life of music executive Clarence Avant.
Featuring Williams’ auto-tuned vocals backed by a choir, the track honors Avant and the music industry greats he was responsible for ushering in. The inspirational lyrics offer a joyful ode to Avant’s lasting legacy, reflected in the film’s plethora of A-list interviewees — from such music-industry luminaries as Quincy Jones and Clive Davis to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — who pay tribute to the groundbreaking figure. “We can still hug him now / After all these years,” Williams sings, “Cause when the darkness, when the darkness comes / He’s our chandelier.”
After performing the song at the Avalon Hollywood in 2019, Williams described how, from the time he first entered the music industry 25 years ago, Avant’s name seemed to come up everywhere he went. While it took Williams another 10 years to finally meet Avant, he credits the business magnate for indirectly affording him the career he has today.
“I just feel so incredibly grateful,” Williams told Billboard. “I couldn’t ever imagine that I would be anywhere near his story, because he doesn’t need me.”
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"One Less Angel"
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel effortlessly transports viewers back to the 1960s with its sets, costumes and, in the third season, the addition of musician Shy Baldwin, played by Leroy McClain.
“There must be one less angel in heaven / Don’t tell, one less angel in heaven / Must be one less angel in heaven / Cause look who’s dancin’ with me,” Baldwin sings with his backup singers, The Silver Belles, shortly after Rachel Brosnahan’s stand-up comic, Midge, has entertained a crowd of hooting and hollering USO members.
“One Less Angel” is one of many tunes Baldwin croons on the series (but worth noting, McClain is lipsyncing to vocals performed by Darius de Haas). The music and lyrics were written by Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore, which is noteworthy as it could have been an easy option for Baldwin’s character to sing popular songs of the time.
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"Memorized"
From Rebecca Pearson (Mandy Moore) aspiring to build a music career to her daughter Kate (Chrissy Metz) also gifting the series a few musical scenes, This Is Us has used songs as powerful storytelling tools.
In the fourth season premiere, a new character named Jack Damon (Blake Stadnik), who is a singer and songwriter, gifts the series with his performance of “Memorized.” In the episode, the audience learns Jack is the son of Kate and Toby (Chris Sullivan) 25 years in the future, and his powerful performance reveals he has achieved the musical success his mother and grandmother sought.
Recurring themes throughout This Is Us, such as the many chance encounters characters experience, are present in the lyrics — “Can one wrong turn give me new direction? / Can one false move bring you one true friend?”
“Memorized” was written by Siddhartha Khosla and Taylor Goldsmith, the lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist from the band Dawes.
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"The Way It Used To Be"
Nine Inch Nails multihyphenates Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross earned their first Emmy nominations this year for “The Way It Used To Be.” The song appears in the sixth episode of the HBO limited series Watchmen, titled “This Extraordinary Being.”
Speaking on THR‘s Behind the Screen podcast, Reznor and Ross explained their creative process while working with series creator Damon Lindelof. Reznor shared that Angela Abar/Sister Night (Regina King) “has been trying to prevent the death of Doctor Manhattan, which he knows is inevitable, and places herself in great danger and goes into a battle … [Then] she looks at him and says ‘we did it’ then you realize no and he’s known the whole time that this is inevitable.”
“There’s a lot of weight the music needs to carry to build that up to where it does become very emotional rather than exciting gun battle,” he added.
A win would take them one Tony away from EGOT status. The pair previously won an Oscar for the score of David Fincher’s The Social Network and a Grammy for the score to Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Reznor has two additional Grammys for his work with Nine Inch Nails.)
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