Will Billie Eilish’s ‘Barbie’ Ballad Become 10th Song to Win Both Oscar and Top Songwriting Grammy? Full List
“What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas has an excellent chance of becoming the first song in a generation to sweep both the Grammy for song of the year and the Oscar for best original song. The hypnotic ballad, which the siblings wrote for Barbie, won the Grammy on Feb. 4 and is the front-runner to win the Oscar on March 10.
No song has won both of these awards since “My Heart Will Go On,” the unsinkable ballad from Titanic. The song, made famous by Celine Dion, won the Grammy for song of the year in February 1999, 11 months after winning the Oscar for best original song. That means no song in Eilish’s lifetime has achieved this double victory, and none has achieved it since Finneas was 18 months old.
Eilish and Finneas’ “No Time to Die” won the Oscar two years ago and won a Grammy for best song written for visual media. That’s an important Grammy category, but it’s not song of the year, where songs from film and TV must compete with all other songs submitted that year. That’s been the ultimate songwriting Grammy since the awards were first presented in 1959.
Henry Mancini & Johnny Mercer are the only songwriters to win both of these awards twice. Barbra Streisand popularized two of these double winners, but she co-wrote – and thus won for – only one of them.
Here are the nine songs that have won both the Oscar for best original song and the Grammy for song of the year. We’ll update this list on Oscar night if “What Was I Made For?” becomes the 10th.
Paul Grein
Billboard