Norah Jones To Perform Nominated Song From 'Ted' At Oscars, Tribute To Movie Musicals Planned

After dropping the ball musically at last year’s ceremony – how the hell do you nominate "The Muppets" and then not let them perform their song? – it looks like this year’s Oscar ceremony isn’t going to ignore the Best Original Song category. In fact, far from it. The Academy already have Adele performing her Oscar-nominated “Skyfall” theme at the ceremony, and now they’ve confirmed that Norah Jones will also appear to perform “Everybody Needs A Best Friend” from “Ted”. We’re assuming this means that all the nominated songs will be performed live this year, which hopefully means that Hugh Jackman will get up on stage to perform “Suddenly” from "Les Miserables." We’d also be shocked if the ceremony’s host Seth MacFarlane doesn’t get himself involved in Norah Jones’ performance of the song that he penned too.

But that’s not all that this year’s telecast producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, have planned in terms of music. A few years ago when Jackman hosted there was a heavy emphasis on singing and dancing and that arguably made for the best ceremony in recent memory. Well, it looks like we could be in for something similar this time around. The Daily Mail are reporting that the Oscars are planning a tribute to musicals, and that the sequence could potentially get the likes of Meryl Streep, John Travolta and Catherine Zeta-Jones involved, as well as the majority of the “Les Miserables” cast, including Samantha Barks, Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried.

Again, we assume that Seth MacFarlane would get himself involved too, and if it means that we get less of his no-punchline comedy and more of what we saw from Jackman’s Oscars, than we’re all for it. If there’s only to be one major tribute in the typically bloated ceremony then we’d prefer it were to the 50 year-old James Bond franchise, but who’s to say they couldn’t combine the two by getting all those screen musical stars to perform some of the best Bond themes. Anne Hathaway sings "Nobody Does It Better"! Hugh Jackman belts out "From Russia With Love"! John Travolta performs "Live and Let Die"! Okay, maybe that’s not the best idea…two separate tributes will go down fine. Regardless, we’re kind of looking forward to this ceremony now, not least because it looks like the closest Best Picture and Best Director races that we’ve seen for some time, and we’re growing more optimistic about what Seth MacFarlane can bring to the table on February 24th.