James Murphy on LCD Soundsystem’s Oscar chances: “I care because I think the film’s great”

'New Body Rhumba', which features in Noah Baumbach's film 'White Noise', was included in the shortlist for Best Original Song along with the likes of Rihanna, Taylor Swift and The Weeknd

LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy has discussed the band’s potential Oscar nomination for their first new song in five years, ‘New Body Rhumba’.

The song was created for the soundtrack to Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, which arrived last year on Netflix. An adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name, the film stars Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle and Raffey Cassidy.

Prior to being commissioned to compose a song for White Noise, Murphy had previously collaborated with Baumbach on the director’s 2010 film Greenberg along with 2014’s While We’re Young, providing the score for both.

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Last month, it was revealed that the song had made the shortlist for the Best Original Song category in the 95th Academy Awards, which will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles on March 12.

Other shortlisted entrants include Rihanna‘s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever song ‘Lift Me Up’, Taylor Swift‘s Where the Crawdads Sing cut ‘Carolina’ and The Weeknd‘s ‘Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)’ from Avatar 2: The Way of Water.

In a new interview with IndieWire, Murphy discussed his feelings about the potential nomination. After joking about whether or not he actually cared about whether the band pick up the award, he elaborated:

“I care because I think the film’s great. It’s a confusing film for some people and I want them to feel compelled to watch it,” Murphy said. “It does this weird thing where it’s pretending to be a simpler film than it is. There are moments where you think you’re watching Uncle Buck and it’s actually fucking insane.

“It’s oscillating above reality until the end, when it fully escapes from reality, with the song in the last bit. I want to make sure people feel like they need to watch it to understand. In years to come, people will understand how dense it is. For that, I would love to get an award. Also, everyone in the band would find it funny.”

Murphy later joked that he was working on achieving EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards) status. “I got a Michelin star next door so it would be a MEGOT,” he said, referring to his Brooklyn restaurant, The Four Horsemen. “But in general I don’t care about stuff like that.”

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‘New Body Rhumba’ is played towards the end of White Noise, and soundtracks a surreal, seven-minute-long dance sequence featuring the film’s cast. The film’s score itself was composed by Danny Elfman. Watch the scene below:

In a four-star review of White NoiseNME wrote: “Broadly faithful to the source material, Baumbach makes surprisingly light work of translating its onslaught of images to the screen. Here, too, dialogue is droll and slightly uneasy; characters seem detached from reality in a way that’s hard to put your finger on.”

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