Off the charts

Whichever side you're on in the debate over the Oscar telecast's best-original-song production numbers (abolish them vs. please don't), most people would agree that the songs themselves aren't what they used to be. The years of, say, Celine Dion's thwapping her chest to demonstrate that her heart would indeed go on are misty water cooler memories.

Good new songs that cling to the mind are hard to come by at the movies. Cinephiles will say this is as it should be, but lovers of shiny tunes that instantly evoke a film will shed a tear. And a gander at the list of 42 eligible songs released last month by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in anticipation of the nominations on Tuesday, will only further sadden movie-music fans.

For instance, what again was ''Freezerburn: The Movie," and how did we not catch its entry, ''Closer Every Day," on the radio? ''Reachin' for Heaven" from ''Ice Princess" gets a nod, but there were so many forgettable sugarcoated ditties on the soundtrack that it seems wrong to single out one. And ''Can't Take It In," which plays somewhere in ''The Chronicles of Narnia," is scarcely distinguishable from whatever was at the end of the ''Lord of the Rings" films. There isn't an ''Up Where We Belong" (the love theme from ''An Officer and a Gentleman"), ''Eye of the Tiger" (from ''Rocky III"), or ''Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (from ''The Lion King") in the bunch.

No, the front-runners in the original-song race this year, like those in the race last year, suffer from a distinct lack of distinction. There's nothing wrong with being unpopular -- the best best pictures, for example, rarely win. The trouble is that many of this year's candidates fail the crucial tests of an original song: either they don't stir a memory of the movie that features them or the movies use them decoratively.

We can lay the blame for some of this at the feet of changing filmmaking styles. Soundtracks were in peak form in the 1980s, and music videos were at their most popular. The movies crisply synergized the two. ''Fame," ''Flashdance," and ''Footloose" were like long-form videos with plots, and that made them an efficient launch platform for the songs. Tony Scott, starting with ''Top Gun," mastered the technique. But while Tom Cruise could once make out with Kelly McGillis for a good minute or two while ''Take My Breath Away" played, today the scene would be shorter and the seduction would likely unfold to the film's score.

This year, ''In the Deep," the ballad from Paul Haggis's racial latticework, ''Crash," aims for a harmony between song and image. But sung by the virtually unknown Bird York, it's significant with a capital S. The song plays over a montage of the movie's characters as a denouement -- almost exactly the way an Aimee Mann song did in Paul Thomas Anderson's ''Magnolia." But no one sings along the way they do in ''Magnolia." (If only they had.) Instead, ''In the Deep" is the sort of warm-bath song that voters go for on Oscar night.

So would the same moment have meant more if a singer such as Celine Dion had done the honors? Perhaps, but according to a recent article in the showbiz trade magazine Variety that declared the end of the ''big movie song," hiring Dion might have tripled the smallish budget of Haggis's film. Ten years ago such a number, written by a top writer -- Diane Warren, for example -- and performed by a top singer, might have cost $100,000. Today it's $500,000. The case for Bird York seems to argue itself. Why go to Vegas when you've got video poker at home?

Another factor is the number of radio stations, each catering to a different corner of the market. It's all niche now, and soundtracks are full of smaller, less pricey bands or older songs meant to appeal to subsets -- horror films are aimed at young men, so are their soundtracks. With such a tight focus, it's unlikely that a song will ever break into the Billboard charts, no matter how big a film is.

The narrowness of the Academy's rules doesn't help an original song's Oscar cause, either. Beyond having to be written expressly for a film, it must also be ''clearly audible" and used somewhere ''in the body of the film or as the first musical cue in the end credits," not the second or, if your movie has enough people to thank, the third. "He Was a Friend of Mine," the exquisite Willie Nelson ballad that plays first at the end of ''Brokeback Mountain" is an old Bob Dylan number and is therefore out of the running, but the Academy's rules disqualify two of the film's original songs, including "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," which won a Golden Globe a couple weeks ago.

Emmylou Harris sings that one, and it's a shame that we won't have that to get misty over during the March 5 Oscar telecast. Instead, the list of potential nominees is stuffed with interchangeable ballads and mid-tempo numbers sung by women with interchangeable voices that are likely to be nominated. The uplifting tune that's played in ''Dreamer" could serve the same purpose in ''Bee Season."

Even the smart and talented can write drivel for a movie. The otherwise prodigious hipster chanteuse Nellie McKay wrote such a song for ''Rumor Has It. . .," a film that used several of her flavorless compositions. Singers used to finish up performing songs like those from ''Dreamer" and ''Ice Princess"; now they launch their careers that way. Ask Carly Simon, whose ''Shoulder to Shoulder" (actually quite lovely) from ''Pooh's Heffalump Movie," made this year's short list.

With a veteran performer, you're willing to look past the syrup and cheese: Hey, at least they've lived it! The movies would be wise to put Dolly Parton's music to work as often as possible. For the transsexual road comedy ''Transamerica" she sings ''Travelin' Thru." It's a jaunty praise-Jesus bluegrass number about becoming who you are, and Parton adds a few extra pounds of sincerity. When the song appears in the movie, it's touching. Director Duncan Tucker sends us home with Parton's chirpy wisdom sitting like an angel on our shoulder.

Ironically, this original-song drought comes as the Academy seems to have lightened up about what's Oscar-worthy. Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, Neil Young, and the boys behind ''South Park" have each been nominated. Two years ago, Eminem won. While it's true that none of the eligible songs this year was hugely popular, there are some inspired entries that aren't likely to make the cut.

Take ''It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from ''Hustle & Flow." The movie shows us the song's sweaty, funky, misogynistic creation in a homemade Memphis studio, rapped by the film's star, Terrence Howard. And it's exciting, convincing, and impressive in a ''Hey, ma, we made a rap" sort of way. The sequence is the key to the movie, since it brings most of the characters' talents to bear on the tune's production. The scene also shows us the modern recipe for a gangsta hit. The secret ingredient is a catchy hook, preferably sung by a pregnant, terrified hooker (Taraji P. Henson).

If the movie had been a hit (surprisingly it wasn't), the ''Pimp" would have swept the nation. ''Hustle & Flow" wouldn't be the same without that number. This epitomizes all that an original tune can be in a film. Long after I'd given up on the movie, I still haven't forgotten that song.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.