Me, Mariah & Marc: an unexpected announcement regarding the Golden Globes
I wake up, on January 4, 2018, I’m making my coffee, (It’s an art and a ritual I take very seriously) and my phone starts blowing up. Four texts at 7 a.m. Four. Four texts that early means only one thing: somebody died. I’m already mentally picking out a black suit and ordering sandwich platters.
Nobody died. It was worse. They were *congratulating* me.
“WAY TO GO, THOM! A GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATION!”
Uh. Beg your pardon?
I made my coffee and went to my computer.
There, in print, following a link, was the grand proclamation across the industry trade magazines about my 2018 Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song! I was sharing the honor with Global Superstar Mariah Carey, and multiple Oscar nominee Marc Shaiman, a man so frequently Oscar-nominated the Academy should issue him a punch card.
Quick problem: I didn’t write the song. Not a word. Not a note. Mariah and Marc wrote it.
Now. Did I know Mariah? Yes. I had produced her music video for “The Star.” Did I know Marc? We’ve shared a best friend for thirty-five years, which in Hollywood makes us family. Did I write the song?
No. No, I did not. They did. I produced the *video*. The video! That’s pictures! Pictures that go *with* the song! It’s a related field the way the man who frames the painting is a related field to Rembrandt.
What happened — as best as my forensic investigation could determine — is that when the record label’s commissioner had a personal crisis mid-project, and because we were friends, I said the five most dangerous words in show business: “I’ll take care of it.” I handled the post, the delivery, and worked with the studio’s promotion department. At some point I rewrote a press blurb, and somewhere between my desk and the publicity department, “music video producer” underwent a kind of corporate game of telephone and emerged, gleaming and wrong, as “songwriter.”
And then the Globes nominated the songwriters. All of them. Including me.
Some uknown person’s mistake, and suddenly I’m in the trades, internationally credited as Mariah Carey’s collaborator. Mariah Carey. A woman whose vocal range starts where mine files a restraining order.
My buttocks clenched with such force I gained an inch of height. I may have created a diamond.
Then my phone rings. It’s Marc Shaiman. And — thank God we’re actually friends — he says, “Hello, *Eve Harrington*.”(The understudy from *All About Eve* who schemes her way into the star’s spotlight. ) That’s right: I was being accused, lovingly, of the most elegant crime in show business. Most people steal a wallet. I had allegedly stolen a third of a Golden Globe nomination from Mariah Carey.
So we try to issue a correction. You know how that goes. The mistake made every outlet on Earth in four minutes. The correction? Nothing. Marc and I ended up posting it ourselves in the *comments sections* — down there with the bots and the guys who type “FIRST!” Two grown men begging strangers to believe one of the nominees doesn’t exist.
Eventually I decided to just own it. People called and asked what I contributed to the song, and I tell them I suggested they put the word “The” before the word “Star.” That’s my catalog. One word. And not even a good one.
But here’s the part that actually hurts: I was credited — globally — as co-writer of a Golden Globe–nominated song, and I never saw a dime. No royalties. No ASCAP invitation. No publishing rights. (I did get a muffin basket from someone I never met at the Grammys, which was nice, though the muffins were kind of dry)
Life just ain’t fair.