Despite all the musical superstars who entered this year’s Emmy competition, only one – Ed Sheeran – managed to score when the 75th annual Emmy Award nominations were announced Wednesday.
Sheeran was nominated (along with co-writers Max Martin and Foy Vance) for the song “A Beautiful Game” for the season 3 finale of “Ted Lasso,” one of two songs from the popular Apple TV+ series that made it into the music-and-lyrics category.
Emmy’s 550-member music peer group ignored the original songs entered by Dolly Parton, David Byrne, Steve Martin, Kid Cudi, Donald Glover and Lainey Wilson, as well as those from such Oscar-winning tunesmiths as Alan Menken, Steven Schwartz, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
Among the seven music categories, a surprising number of first-time nominees was recognized, and more than one-fourth of all the nominees in the five composition and songwriting categories are women, another positive sign of change in the Hollywood musical landscape.
The shocking omissions among this year’s nominees included any recognition for the music of “Queen Charlotte,” “House of the Dragon,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (including its John Williams theme, considered a shoo-in) or any of the songs in the acclaimed “Daisy Jones & the Six.”
The multiple nominees were predictable, and all are previous Primetime Emmy winners: three nominations for Nicholas Britell (“Succession,” “Andor”), two each for Danny Elfman (“Wednesday”), Laura Karpman (“Ms. Marvel”) and music director Adam Blackstone (“Super Bowl Halftime Show,” “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”).
Composers better known for their work in feature films scored a surprising number of first-time nominations: Gustavo Santaolalla (“Brokeback Mountain”) earned his first Emmy nod for music for HBO Max’s “The Last of Us,” while Howard Shore received his first for the theme for Prime Video’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and John Powell, his first for music for the Apple TV+ documentary “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.” Shore’s three Oscars are for “Lord of the Rings” movies.
In the most-watched music categories, those of “original dramatic score,” six of the 15 nominated programs — more than a third — feature first-time Emmy nominees. Cited for their series composition work are Britell (the Logan’s-death episode of “Succession” and the finale of “Andor”), Santaolalla (episode 3 of “The Last of Us”), Elfman and Chris Bacon (episode 2 of “Wednesday”) and Cristobal Tapia de Veer (episode 4 of season 2 of “The White Lotus”).
Nominated for composition for a limited or anthology series, movie or special are two previous Emmy winners – John Debney (“Hocus Pocus 2”) and Laura Karpman (“Ms. Marvel”) – and four first-timers in the competition: Sarah Schachner for “Prey,” Ariel Marx for “A Small Light” and the team of Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson for “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”
Most of the nominees for scoring a documentary series or special have been to the Emmys before: Tony Morales (“Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico”), James Newton Howard (“Light & Magic”), Blake Neely (“Pamela, A Love Story”) and Hans Zimmer (“Prehistoric Planet”). Zimmer’s co-writers on “Prehistoric Planet” – Anze Rozman and Kara Talve – are newcomers, as is Powell for “Still,” the Michael J. Fox doc.
A surprising 11 of the 14 songwriters nominated in the original music-and-lyrics category are freshman nominees. They include: Lili Haydn and Ben Bromfield for “Ginny & Georgia” (song “Marriage Is a Dungeon”); Heather McIntosh, Taura Stinson and Allyson Newman for “The L Word: Generation Q” (song “All About Me”); Al Yankovic for “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” (song “Now You Know”); and Sheeran, Vance and Martin for “Ted Lasso.”
Tom Howe, “Ted Lasso’s” composer, was nominated (along with newcomers Jamie Hartman and Sam Ryder) for another “Lasso” song, “Fought and Lost,” while Curtis Moore and Thomas Mizer were singled out for their song “Your Personal Trash Man Can” from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Moore and Mizer have been to the Emmys twice before, also for “Maisel” songs.
Three of the nominees in the main title theme music category are previous Emmy winners: Britell (“Andor”), Karpman (“Ms. Marvel”) and Elfman (“Wednesday”). Joining them, along with Shore for “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” is first-time nominee Holly Amber Church for “Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.”
Blackstone’s dual nominations in the music direction category – “Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show Starring Rihanna,” with Omar Edwards, and “2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony” – place him up against previous winners and nominees: Greg Phillinganes for “Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song: Joni Mitchell,” Rickey Minor for “The Oscars,” and the “Saturday Night Live” team of Eli Brueggemann, Leon Pendarvis and Lenny Pickett for last December’s Austin Butler episode.
The music supervision category is a mix of veterans and newcomers: Frankie Pine for “Daisy Jones & the Six,” and Tony Von Pervieux and Christa Miller for “Ted Lasso” are the fresh faces in the competition. Gabe Hilfer, for “The White Lotus,” has been nominated before, while Robin Urdang (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) is a three-time winner and Nora Felder (“Stranger Things”) has won once.
All seven music categories will be awarded at the Creative Arts Awards, currently scheduled for Sept. 9-10, although those dates are subject to change depending on what happens with the actors and writers in the days and weeks to come.
