The Music That Made Movie’s Biggest Night A Ratings Success

Adele At The 85th Annual Academy Awards

ABC’s bet on Seth MacFarlane rejuvenating the traditionally older demographic heavy Academy Awards appears to have paid off. With MacFarlane at the helm the 85th Academy Awards boosted ABC’s ratings up 19 percent with a four percent raise in the  adult 18-49 demo.  According to Rolling Stone, after the numbers were crunched, this made it the most popular Academy Awards Show since 2007.  Naturally, being the music geeks we are, we couldn’t help but attribute a fair portion of last night’s success to it’s music.

In our eyes and many others, the big headliner music wise was Adele’s Oscar win.  Her James Bond title track theme “Skyfall” beat out  Katy Perry, Keith Urban, Jon Bon Jovi, as well as Norah Jones, who sang the Ted theme “Everybody Needs a Best Friend”, written by Oscar host Seth MacFarlane. The celebration of  James Bond only began there.

Adele and Shirley Bassey did show stopping rendition of their Bond tune as part of a 50th-annivesary tribute to Bond and his place in the movie world.  Like Adele, Bassey performed the title track for the 1964 James Bond “Goldfinger”.  This was one of two Adele like Bond signature songs for Bassey.  Fans of the franchise will undoubtably remember her history making title track theme, “Diamond’s Are Forever ” that was released in 1971.

Ever the showman himself, who also happens to have  his own record deal with Universal’s Republic Records, MacFarlane wasn’t about to be out done.  Remaining true to his own “Family Guy” brand of humor, MacFarlane performed, with mixed reaction, his own Show tune inspired original called “We Saw Your Boobs.’  After looking at it all together.  All and all, when it was these things that made the show, and allowed ABC to achieve the audience expansion goals of hiring MacFarlane in the first place.

Do you agree?  If so, maybe it will be a trend and next year’s host could  be H. Jon Benjamin from Bob’s Burgers.  What do you Think?