Lin-Manuel Miranda is one step closer to achieving EGOT status after earning an Oscar nomination in the best original song category for “Encanto’s” “Dos Oruguitas.” Miranda already has Emmy, Tony and Grammy awards.
Should he succeed in winning the Oscar, he would join the elite group of artists who have achieved the status, including John Legend, Marvin Hamlisch and Robert Lopez. Composer Alan Menken was the most recent artist to achieve EGOT status in 2020, when he won an Emmy for outstanding original song in a children’s, young adult or animated program for “Waiting in the Wings” from Disney’s “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”
Miranda also has the rare distinction of winning a Pulitzer Prize for “Hamilton.” There are currently only two other people in the world who hold that honor, Hamlisch and Richard Rodgers.
Miranda was last Oscar-nominated five years ago for “How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana,” but lost to “City of Stars” from “La La Land.” The nomination today comes after “Encanto’s” surge on the Billboard album charts and the viral song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” The song has exceeded all expectations, becoming the first song from a Disney movie to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart since “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin” in 1993.
The multi-hyphenate wrote eight new songs for “Encanto.” “Dos Oruguitas” is the first song Miranda has written in Spanish. In an interview with Variety in December, Miranda said: “Inspired by the butterfly metaphor, I wrote the song about these two caterpillars who are in love and don’t want to let each other go, but of course, they have to let each other go, because how on earth will the miracle come if they don’t make room and make space for that? That to me felt like a delicious metaphor for what the entire family is going through.” He added, “I was very far outside my comfort zone, and I had my thesaurus with me at all times. Even after I’d written my first draft, I asked myself if the Spanish that I’m using would translate and be at home in Colombia and Puerto Rico.”
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