The songwriter Diane Warren has continued her record-breaking streak of losses at the 97th Academy Awards with a defeat in the best song category. The winners were the married composer Clément Ducol and singer-songwriter Camille for El Mal from Emilia Pérez.
Warren, 68, had been in contention for the song The Journey, from Tyler Perry’s Netflix film The Six Triple Eight, about the all-Black, all-female 6,888th battalion during the second world war.
It was Warren’s eighth consecutive nomination in the category; she had also been nominated on eight previous occasions, the first of which was in 1987.
Warren holds the record for the most Oscar nominations by a female songwriter, surpassing the 15 earned by the late songwriter Marilyn Bergman.
The dubious honour of most nominations without a win is still held by Greg P Russell, the sound mixer who has worked on the likes of Skyfall, Armageddon and the three first Transformers films. He is not nominated this year.
Warren was awarded an honorary Oscar at the Governors awards in 2022, to add to her Grammy, Emmy, Golden Globes, Ivor Novello and Billboard Music awards.
She has written nine US No 1 songs and 33 top-10 songs including Cher’s 1989 hit If I Could Turn Back Time; Céline Dion’s Because You Loved Me (1996); How Do I Live, which was made famous by LeAnn Rimes in 1997; and Aerosmith’s 1998 smash I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.
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