Thirty-nine songs from eligible feature-length motion pictures are in contention for nominations in the Original Song category for the 84th Academy Awards®.
The eligible songs (sorted alphabetically by movie) are:
"Song Title" - Movie Title
"The World I Knew" - African Cats
"Lay Your Head Down" - Albert Nobbs
"Star Spangled Man" - Captain America: The First Avenger
"Collision of Worlds" - Cars 2
"Dakkanaga Dugu Dugu" - DAM999
"DAM999 Theme Song" - DAM999
"Mujhe Chod Ke" - DAM999
"Rainbird" - Dirty Girl
"Keep On Walking" - The First Grader
"Where the River Goes" - Footloose
"Hello Hello" - Gnomeo & Juliet
"Love Builds a Garden" - Gnomeo & Juliet
"Bridge of Light" - Happy Feet Two
"The Mighty Sven" - Happy Feet Two
"Never Be Daunted" - happythankyoumoreplease
"Hell and Back" - Hell and Back Again
"The Living Proof" - The Help
"Coeur Volant" - Hugo
"It's How We Play" - I Don't Know How She Does It
"When the Heart Dies" - In the Land of Blood and Honey
"Ja Nao Estar" - José and Pilar
"The Keeper" - Machine Gun Preacher
"Life's a Happy Song" - The Muppets
"Man or Muppet" - The Muppets
"Pictures in My Head" - The Muppets
"Summer Song" - The Music Never Stopped
"Imaginary Friends" - Olive
"Sparkling Day" - One Day
"Taking You with Me" - Our Idiot Brother
"The Greatest Song I Ever Heard" - POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
"Hot Wings" - Rio
"Let Me Take You to Rio" - Rio
"Real in Rio" - Rio
"Shelter" - Take Shelter
"Gathering Stories" - We Bought a Zoo
"Pop" - White Irish Drinkers
"Think You Can Wait" - Win Win
"The Backson Song" - Winnie the Pooh
"So Long" - Winnie the Pooh
The Academy will screen clips featuring each song—in random order—to voting members of the Music Branch in Los Angeles (or DVD copies will be made available to branch members who are unable to attend the screening and request home viewing). There are 236 members of the Academy's Music Branch, which is chaired by Bruce Broughton.
Nominees are determined by an average point system of voting. Each voting member will score each song on a scale of 6 to 10 (in 0.5 increments) and a song must receive an average score of 8.25 or better to qualify for a nomination. If no songs meet that criteria, there will be no nominees for the Original Song category. If two or more songs achieve the 8.25 or better score, they shall be deemed the nominees (up to five).
Further, only two songs may be nominated from any one movie. Should three or more songs qualify from a particular movie, the two highest scoring songs will be nominated and the remaining songs removed from the nominee process.
To be eligible, a song must consist of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the picture. A clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition of both lyric and melody must be used in the body of the film, or as the first music cue in the end credits.
The 84th Annual Academy Award nominations will be announced Tuesday, January 24, 2012. The award ceremony will be held Sunday, February 26, 2012 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and air on ABC.