www.thewrap.com: If there was a breakthrough original song from last year’s crop of contenders, it was undoubtedly “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned earworm from “Encanto” that has gone on to become a certifiable blockbuster (it currently has nearly 125 million streams on Spotify and is the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100). But when the Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday morning, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” was conspicuously absent. Instead, the stirring “Dos Oruguitas” from “Encanto” scored the nomination.
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I love Encanto so much. Every aspect of it is so good and between me and my boyfriend (it’s their favorite movie), we’ve dissected the design and character progression many times. What I’ve never thought about, surprisingly, is how the music serves to further the piece. I am, at heart, an English kid. I love dissecting literature and language. Despite this, I have never spent much time thinking about the function of songs in musical movies and theatre. I know basics but I treat them as “the song that has to be there I guess”. I think it makes me a bad theatre person, but I never thought of why a song is NEEDED in a certain piece rather than just included for fun. “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” is technically not an important song in Encanto, but I had never considered the idea of an “important song”. The idea of songs either being plot progression, exposition, or motivation is very new to me. I’m interested to see how this affects my analysis of musicals in the future.
‘It’s like if they submitted Olaf’s song from “Frozen” instead of “Let It Go.”’ I really disagree with this part, but I think that the rest of the articles make sense. The song that has been nominated for the Oscar may not be on par with the hit song, but there is no question to the significance of the song in the movie’s emotional core. “We don’t talk about Bruno” was an fun introductory song that introduced the characters, but didn’t set the atmosphere of the movie, like how other nominated songs did, such as “Circle of Life” in the Lion King. Disney submits songs that represent the movie as a whole. Take out “We don’t talk about Bruno”, it is just one less fun, catchy number. There are other ways to introduce everyone, but take out “ Dos Oruguitas” and you lose the heartbeat song of the film. Going back to the initial disagreement, comparing Olaf’s song to Dos Oruguitas is just wrong. Sorry Josh Gad lol
I have heard some of the information about this situation. I am one of the people that have been listening to We Don’t Talk about Bruno on repeat since Christmas Eve when Encanto became available on Dinsey+. I think the song is so fun and would have been a surefire win for Disney. I will say I think that what they decided to do for this movie is honorable, Dos Oruguitas was the song that the team wanted to win because of the power that song had and not necessarily because it was the most popular. Something that I learned from this article is that Dos Oruguitas was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first song written completely in Spanish which is something that he is proud of. I think the pride you have in your own work is worth more than what you can win from it. In addition, Lin-Manuel Miranda very likely could have been competing against himself because of the sheer amount of work he was a part of in the past year. Overall, I think that this was the right choice even if it means not winning.
When “Encanto” first came out my friends and I were so obsessed with it that we watched it twice. In turn we also loved to run around singing “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”. Unfortunately I think that the article is completely right about the nature of the song, while “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is an absolute bop it doesn’t offer much more than that. The song is super fun to sing and listen to, because Lin- Manuel Miranda can sure write a theatry song that has the end layering each of the solo parts. But other than that it’s isn’t particularly emotional, it's mostly to move the plot along and tell backstory that we wouldn’t otherwise learn. I think “Dos Oruguitas” was overlooked by most audiences simply because it was in Spanish. If you read the translation the lyrics are extremely beautiful and meaningful to the center of the story which is family and the flaws that come with being a family.
What do you mean ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ was not nominated for an Oscar? Now, I have my issues with “Encanto,” more specifically Lin-Manuel Miranda being the token Latino for anything XYZ. Nevertheless, I can admit Miranda is an incredible composer; perhaps even the greatest composer of our times. His signature fast-paced, chaotic harmony– in which several characters sing at the same time never fails to amaze me. Therefore, reading ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ was not nominated comes as a shocker. Not only that but hearing ‘Dos Oruigitas’ also by Lin-Manuel Miranda (sung by Sebastián Yatra) also comes as a surprise. And no, I am not saying ‘Dos Orugitas’ is not also an incredible song. I really much think it is. But ‘Dos Orugitas’ is not the song that has us all singing in the shower, know is it? I’m glad to hear, however, ‘Dos Oruguitas’ was Miranda’s first song completely written in Spanish. Yet I don’t think it actually stands a chance.
“The Academy will not be talking about Bruno” is such a funny start to this article. Okay I will admit that I still have yet to watch Encanto from start to finish. I have obviously seen a variety of clips and extensively listened to several of the film’s stellar songs, so I am at least familiar with the soundtrack. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”’s impact and popularity seems truly unrivaled by any other musical work or artistry put out this year, so it really is a surprise how it was not nominated for an Oscar. The article makes a fair point in saying that the song does not provide much plot progression or impact, something “Dos Oruguitas” does. I would agree that the public mainstream popularity and influence of songs should not be the key factor to be considered, but it was definitely a shocker when the news broke.
Though I have heard the reason why Miranda didn't nominate We Don’t Talk About Bruno, I did not know this was the first song he has written fully in Spanish. Miranda has a history of writing songs in “Spanglish”, or a combination of Spanish and English to form a distinctly unique dialect. But as a Spanish speaker whose first language is Spanish, I am filled with immense pride that this is what he could come up with as his first. Language is something so important to me, and I can imagine it means the world to writers too. There's something so powerful about the song being in Spanish in the English dub of the movie. The amount of trust they must have had in its impact must have been unprecedented, at least I think so as a life-long Disney fan. This song makes me cry inconsolably whenever it comes on and will be rooting for it come Oscars night.
I saw somewhere that We Don’t Talk About Bruno is becoming just as popular, if not more so, than Let It Go was around the peak of the Frozen era. Personally my favorite song from Encanto was Surface Pressure, but I can understand that We Don’t Talk About Bruno is extremely catchy and even called an “earworm” by the author of this article. Learning about the submitting process for Oscar nominated songs was also interesting. Disney has such a monopoly on the media industry and it really hit me when it said that they stopped nominating more than one song per movie because Disney did not want two of its own songs competing against each other. “Dos Oruguitas” is also great and I am glad that Encanto is getting nominated overall but it really does shock me that We Don’t Talk About Bruno was not projected to be such a “bop.” Congrats to the year of Lin Manuel Miranda at the Oscars.
I love Encanto so much it's such a good movie not just in it's plot and representation, but it's beautiful animation and fun music. I just don't understand why they didn't want to submit it to win an Oscar. It's a bop that almost everyone knows the words to, but then again, it's not like Lin Manuel Miranda needs more awards on his shelf than he already has. Like there's probably a lot of paperwork that people don't want to fill out to submit it and they just didn't want to haha. I also think if they were to submit a song they should've submitted Luisa's song because she is a buff woman that I love with all of my heart. That girl deserves all of the love and support and could use a win. She's also like the character that little children love the most because again, who wouldn't love a buff girl that little buff girls can look up to. #GiveLuisaTheWorldPlease
Out of curiosity, I googled the other songs nominated for Oscars this year. And, unfortunately, Dos Oruguitas isn’t as present in the public consciousness as some of the other nominees. This means yet another year where Lin Manuel Miranda remains without an EGOT. I think it goes to show how the music industry has changed with tik tok and other short video sharing apps. Prized qualities of a song are now easy to memorize lyrics, strong character, and several unique parts for lots of video potential. We Don’t Talk About Bruno has it all, as well as being objectively perfect in every other way. It’s a bummer that Disney didn’t call this one right, but I don’t doubt that Miranda will have a chance again soon. He makes a lot of movies these days. And, who knows, Dos Oruguitas still has a shot. Like everything about Encanto, it’s fantastic in its own right.
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