John Legend Prepares the Academy to Shine

As it always goes with Oscar, one never knows how the Best Song race will shape up. Remember how we all thought that Springsteen song from The Wrestler was going to take it? Well, so then The Academy happens. Anyway, this John Legend song from Waiting for Superman is a good bet. Legend played it on Oprah this afternoon and right now I can’t see this losing. Precedent: Melissa Etheridge winning for An Inconvenient Truth. Please tell me I got that right.

“The story is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching,” Legend says of “Waiting for Superman.” “It tells the story of these kids who have to enter a lottery to try to get to the best school in their neighborhood, and if they don’t they’re likely to go to a school that produces a lot of dropouts and not many college attendees. So, their life is being decided by the flip of a coin, by a lottery. And knowing that, and knowing that some of their potential could go to waste, I felt inspired to write something.”