Elton John, Diane Warren and more react to 2025 Oscar music nominations

NEW YORK (AP) — The 2025 Oscar nominations are here, and its music categories reflect a wide range of talent.

The often-nominated Diane Warren is represented for a 16th time for “The Journey” from “The Six Triple Eight." Elton John, recently retired from live performance, is up for original song for “Never Too Late,” from the documentary about his life. “Emilia Pérez” dominates in that category, with two of the five nominations and one for best score. That means three nominations for composer duo Clément Ducol and Camille. Thursday also marked the first Oscar nominations for Abraham Alexander and Black Pumas' Adrian Quesada, who composed “Like A Bird” for “Sing Sing."

“Challengers” is notably missing from the original score category. In addition to “Emilia Pérez," those nominees include Daniel Blumberg for “The Brutalist," Volker Bertelmann for “Conclave,” John Powell and Stephen Schwartz for “Wicked,” and AP breakthrough artist Kris Bowers for “The Wild Robot."

Take a look at how some of the Oscar music nominees reacted Thursday.

Diane W

arren, original song nod for “The Journey” from “The Six Triple Eight”

“The Journey” is Warren's 16th Oscar nomination. Could it make for her first win?

“The fact that I get another shot, you know, is awesome. I love it. It’s like the losing team that’s getting sent back,” she joked to The Associated Press. "I don’t know anything about sports and stuff, but I guess (it’s) like a Super Bowl, like a team that, you know, loses for decades. People root for them.

“I have an honorary Oscar sitting right over there,” she gestures off to the side. “He gets very lonely.”

As for that number, 16: “I never did have a sweet 16,” she jokes. “I was 16 but probably I wasn't sweet.” Not only that, but she's been nominated across five decades. “Since I'm only 39, how did that happen?”

This year, like in past years, she held a “sleepless sleepover” with friends in anticipation of the nomination announcement.

“Emilia Pérez” snags three music noms for Clément Ducol and Camille

The three nominations for the film's score and songs “El Mal” and “Mi Camino” are Ducol and Camille's first.

“You go from anxiety to relief and you're filled up with energy and you need that," Camille said of her reaction to the news. “We’ve worked so much, and we’ve worked so much for the campaign ... I feel very fulfilled and very happy for all the team.”

“For me, it represents something very important,” she said of the film's recognition. “It's a very free, provocative and empathic, compassionate movie. And I really think this is what we need now.”

“It's totally incredible. I was like, ‘What?’ It’s three nominations. It’s huge,” said Ducol. “We were involved at the beginning of the construction of the story in music ... So everything is linked together, is woven together between the script, the screenplay, the songs. And so, we feel like it’s our story, our movie ... It's not just a musical or reflecting a story or reflecting action in the movie. The music and the songs, in this movie, is the script. It is the story."

“Never Too Late” returns

Elton John to original song Oscar race

John has won two Oscars prior to this nomination. Both were in the original song category: in 1994, he won for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King” and in 2019 for "(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from “Rocketman.” This is his fifth nomination.

“It’s an incredible honour to receive this nomination for ‘Never Too Late,’ alongside my collaborators Brandi Carlile, Bernie Taupin and Andrew Watt," he wrote in a statement. "Thank you to the Academy for this nomination and to everyone who helped bring this beautiful song to the world.”

Taupin, John's longtime lyricist, has been nominated and won once before, also for "(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again." This is his second nomination. “What makes this so special is that it was a collaborative effort that included three individuals who are dear to me, not just as a talented crew, but who have become a close-knit creative family,” he said in a statement.

This is the first nomination for both Brandi Carlile and Andrew Watt.

“I’m having a hard time fathoming, let alone explaining to anybody what it feels like to be Oscar nominated alongside my greatest heroes of all time for something so meaningful," Carlile said in a statement. "I honestly can’t imagine a higher honor.”

“I can’t express how grateful and excited I am to be nominated alongside these superstar songwriters and artists at this year’s Academy Awards," said Watt. "May the dream never end.”

“Like A Bird”

from

“Sing Sing” mints two first-time Oscar nominees

This the first nomination for both Alexander and Quesada.

Quesada was driving when he found out he is an Oscar nominee. “I had just dropped my daughter off at school, and I got the first text. And I looked and saw the name, and I knew it was a friend who works in film. And I’m like, ‘My God.' I just got chills,” he recounts. “Abe and I, who did the song, would have never imagined, you know, waking up to an Academy Award nomination.”

He says being nominated for a song in a moving film that is being screened for incarcerated people holds additional weight. “There's — no pun intended — a bigger picture here with this film.”

Alexander was at home in Fort Worth, Texas, watching the live stream when he found out. “I was on the couch this morning watching it, and I instantly started crying,” he said. “It feels surreal.”

He describes the nomination as “a validation of my artistry, in a way.” But in many other ways, “The song is only a reflection of this film, and the film is truly a piece of art that helps.”

So, how will he celebrate? “I'm gonna eat pizza and ice cream!” he laughs.

John Powell, original score nomination for “Wicked”

This is Powell's second Oscar nomination, both in the original score category.

Powell, who evacuated his home and studio in the Pacific Palisades following the Los Angeles-area wildfires and cannot yet return, thought the Academy delayed the nomination announcements even further, to next week. He's currently staying “in my girlfriend’s mother’s backroom at the moment, on a pullout couch.

“It's such a weird time to be getting excited about something like this ... I quite happily slept in this morning and got a call from my agent, and I was like, ‘What the hell is she calling me for? What could be that urgent?’" he told The AP. “She woke me up. And the poodles.

“It's a wonderful thing. It was a shock,” he says of the nomination. “At the moment, you have to understand, it could be to ‘get the hell out.’ I mean, that's what we're all thinking.”

Powell says "Wicked” really accomplished what he likes to do in his work, “which is bring that joy to the cinema.”

Kris Bowers, original score nomination for “The Wild Robot”

Bowers has been nominated twice before, in documentary categories, and won his first Oscar in 2023 for “The Last Repair Shop.” This is the composer's first nomination for original score.

“I feel like ever since I was a kid, this is the category that I would study and the space that I was always hoping to be welcomed into,” he said. "I feel pretty honored.”

Working on the animated “The Wild Robot,” he says, was an opportunity to connect with a childhood dream. “When I was a kid, I actually wanted to be an animator just as much as I wanted to be a composer,” he says, referencing Disney cartoons and “Tom and Jerry.” “Those cartoons that have no words were conveying a lot of the emotional storytelling with the music.”

His daughter was six months old when he started the project and had turned 2 by its end; he associates the project with those first years of parenthood.

But he also describes this moment in time as “bittersweet,” referring to the ongoing wildfires that have destroyed more than 14,000 structures and displaced tens of thousands. “We have a lot of really close friends that that lost everything,” he adds. Bowers evacuated for a week.

“Conclave” composer Volker Bertelmann celebrates with soup, polka and 50 Cent

Bertelmann has been nominated twice before and won for his score to “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 2022. In 2016 he was nominated for the first time for original score for “Lion."

“I was cooking vegetable soup for my family because in Germany, we have quite (the) winter at the moment. It’s very cold,” he said of the moment he found out about the nomination.

“We have already celebrated a bit, my wife and my kids ... I made the soup and then suddenly, you know, the news came in. We were just jumping around and put some music on. We danced a little bit. I love dancing when I’m celebrating.”

Their music of choice? “We use a lot of let’s say traditional polkas and, you know, very interesting, weird, weird music that we dance to" — and “50 Cent.”

Daniel Blumberg, original score nomination for “The Brutalist”

This is Blumberg's first Oscar nomination. He was having lunch in London with “ The Brutalist” director, producer and co-writer Brady Corbet when he found out. “It's been quite a surreal day,” he said. The pair shared a hug when the news arrived.

“'The Brutalist' was always such an important project for me,” he says, describing the team behind it as dedicated to making “something with urgency, to make something with no compromise.”

“I think we'll have a drink tonight,” he says of his celebratory plans. “I’d love to go to Kent and have a drink with John Tilbury, who played piano. He’s in his 80s. And we always had vodka at lunch when we were working together ... I think that if I could choose a way of celebrating, I'd probably be going to John's cottage in Kent.”