This must be a mind-boggling question for most people, but not for Oscar Awards fans who have followed Hollywood’s much anticipated annual night of glamour and triumph. Actually, few people have realized that lots of songs that brought home the Oscar statuette would end up becoming classics. This is likely the opposite when it comes to songwriting tiffs these days when most winners do not guarantee fame afterwards.

That most winners in Oscars’ Original Song Category are becoming instant classics makes the Academy Awards very much intact and highly reputable when it comes to this particular category. Plus the fact people often get themselves surprised upon realizing that some of their all-time favorites were originally Oscar winners.

Does this mean that Oscar’s awards for music category, especially that for Best Original Song, receives undeservingly less attention considering that classic songs become part of the people’s pyche in a much deeper sense than the rest of the other technical awards? If the answer is yes, then it’s high time Original Song nominees get noticed and be given much attention the way it truly deserves.

So, which of the three nominees in this year’s Original Song category ends up in the league of "Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Ritchie (White Nights, 1985) and "Evergreen" by Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams (A Star Is Born, 1976)? Will it be Dolly Parton’s theme for "Transamerica," "In The Deep" by Kathleen York and Michael Becker ("Crash"), or "It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp" by Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman, and Paul Beauregard (Hustle and Flow)? Will the winning song become a classic like "Windmills Of Your Mind" (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968) and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head" (Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, 1969).

Following is a list of trivia which proves that some of today’s classic songs are Oscar originals.

• "Fame" (1980), "You Light Up My Life" (1977) and "The Way We Were" (1973) are just three oscar-winning classics off movies of the same title.

• Mike Kamen, Robert John Lange, and superstar Bryan Adams were behind the songs "(Everything I do) I Do It For You" and "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman" which got nominated in Academy Awards’ Original Song Category back in 1991 and 1995, respectively. Both, however, lost to numbers composed or co-written by Alan Menken: "Beauty and The Beast" and "Colours Of The Wind."

• Divas Madonna and Celine Dion both performed winning pieces. The former sang "You Must Love Me" (by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice) in 1996 while the latter delivered "My Heart Will Go On" (by James Horner and Will Jennings) for James Cameron’s record-setting "Titanic."

• "Que Sera Sera" and "When You Wish Upon A Star" are just two old hits that became Oscars’ bests, winning in 1956 and 1940, respectively.

• Controversial rap artist Eminem surprised Hollwywood when his song "Lose Yourself" which he wrote with Jeff Bass and Luis Resto won the award for his movie "8 Mile" (2002) which he co-starred with Kim Basinger.

• Middle-aged stars Elton John and Phil Collins are also included in the winners’ list. John won it in 1994 for "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" which he co-wrote with Tim Rice, while Collins bested the other nominees in 1999 when he performed "You’ll Be In My Heart" for the animated movie "Tarzan."

• Hitmaker Diane Warren’s "How Do I Live" (Con Air) and "I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing" (Armaggedon) frequented the airwaves but didn’t win the award as nominees in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

• Apart from the two above, other notable non-winners were "Blaze Of Glory" by Jon Bon Jovi for "Yong Guns II" (1990) and "After All" by Tom Snow and Dean Pitchford which Peter Cetera and Cher performed for "Chances Are" (1989).

• Irving Berlin’s "White Christmas," popularized by Bing Crosby and is noted for its high sales as a single, won in 1942 for the movie "Holiday Inn" while Wizard Of Oz’s "Over The Rainbow" got the nod during the highly competitive 1939 Oscars.

• Two danceable songs made it as winners: "Flashdance, What A Feeling" (Flashdance) in 1983 and "(I’ve Had) the time of My Life" (Dirty Dancing) in 1987.

(source: www.mfiles.co.uk)