Oscar voters are currently filing their nomination ballots, so all the people in contention for the big awards are making their big charm-offensive pitches. Some of the people who are trying to win those awards are really, really popular musicians. Take Ed Sheeran. (Please.) Last year, Sheeran contributed a song called "Drive" to the soundtrack of the Brad Pitt racing movie F1. He recorded that song with an all-star team of musicians, and he got that whole group together to perform on Wednesday night's Jimmy Kimmel Live!
"Drive" is basically an '80s beer-commercial rocker. It will almost certainly not win the Oscar for Best Original Song. If anything other than "Golden" from Kpop Demon Hunters wins that award, it'll be a legit shocker. "Drive" might not even get nominated, but Sheeran is going to give it his best shot anyway. Sheeran co-wrote the song with John Mayer and big-deal producer Blake Slatkin, and Mayer and Slatkin wrote it together. The recording has Dave Grohl on drums, session legend Pino Palladino on bass, and Grohl's Foo Fighters bandmate Rami Jaffee on keyboards.
On Kimmel last night, Sheeran got the whole band together, and they performed "Drive" live for the first time. I'm pretty sure this was Mayer's first public appearance since the death of Bob Weir, his Dead & Company bandmate. The "Drive" performance was fine, I guess? They all looked a little awkward up there together. Sheeran, you have to figure, is used to performing entirely by himself. The song continues to be nothing special. None of that matters because the whole point is the spectacle of all those guys on the same stage at the same time. Here it is.
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which apparently has plans to reduce its number of musical performances, was the site of more Best Original Song Oscar campaigning on Tuesday night. That's when Sinners star Miles Caton, who was a backup singer for H.E.R. before his genuinely amazing screen debut, performed the movie song "I Lied To You" with Sinners composer Ludwig Göransson, already a two-time Oscar winner, and with soul great Raphael Saadiq. I liked that performance a lot better than the Ed Sheeran one. Here it is:
Teyana Taylor doesn't have a Best Original Song contender, but she's Oscar campaigning, too. She just won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her role in One Battle After Another, and she's a frontrunner to win that Oscar, too. Last night, Taylor was on The Tonight Show to do a Jimmy Fallon interview, and she also got together with Lucky Daye to perform "Hard Part," their duet from Taylor's recent album Escape Room. Here's that performance:
