Taylor Swift collaborated with legendary composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to write the original song “Beautiful Ghosts" for the upcoming adaptation of the musical Cats. The famous musical is very loosely based on T. S. Eliot's children's poetry book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and features music by Webber. Swift plays the feline Bombalurina in the Tom Hooper-directed adaptation, which hits theaters on December 20, 2019. The impressive ensemble cast also includes Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Idris Elba, Jason Derulo, James Corden, and Rebel Wilson.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical premiered in 1981, and it remains one of the longest-running plays of all time on both Broadway and London's West End. The story follows a night in the life of the Jellicles, a tribe of singing and dancing street cats who fantasize about traveling to a mystical afterlife they call the Heaviside Layer. Cats is a divisive musical. While many audiences fell in love with the playful choreography and songs, others find the bizarre cat costumes extremely disturbing. The half-human, half-cat costumes and facepaint produce an uncanny valley effect, and even fans of the musical can admit that the costumes look weird - and the movie's CGI approach only heightens the weirdness.
Variety reports that Taylor Swift will sing "Beautiful Ghosts" over the movie's closing credits; however, dancer Francesca Hayward will perform the song in the movie itself (with a reprise by Dench). Hayward is an accomplished ballerina making her feature-film debut with a starring turn in Cats as Victoria the White Cat. Dame Judi Dench is an Academy Award-winning actress playing an elderly cat named Old Deuteronomy. In a behind-the-scenes promotional video released by Universal Pictures, Webber describes the narrative motivation behind "Beautiful Ghosts".
Of course, Webber, Hooper, and Swift may have another, more practical motivation for writing a new song for Cats. By adding an original song to the soundtrack, they will be eligible for the Best Original Song Oscar in 2020. It's not the first time Hooper and Webber have used this technique to generate buzz and increase their chances of taking home an Oscar statue.
When Tom Hooper adapted the musical Les Misérables for the big screen, he commissioned an additional song for the film. "Suddenly," by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer, and Alain Boublil, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2012. Likewise, Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a new original song for the 2004 adaptation of Phantom of the Opera. Sung by star Minnie Driver over the end credits, "Learn To Be Lonely" was also nominated for best original song in 2004. That means Taylor Swift has an excellent chance of getting nominated for her own Academy Award in the near future, although the odds are against her winning.
If Taylor Swift does win the Academy Award for Best Original Song for her new Cats number, she would be halfway to an EGOT. She previously won the 2015 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media — Original Interactive Program for the "Taylor Swift Experience," sponsored by American Express.
Source: Universal Pictures / Variety
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