Film Music Reporter

The Academy has notified members of the music branch that the Oscar-shortlisted original song Forbidden Road from the biographical musical drama Better Man has been disqualified. The track co-written (with Freddy Wexler & Sacha Skarbek and produced by Dan Romer & Wexler) and performed by Robbie Williams was found to feature “material from an existing song that was not written for this film.”  The existing title has been identified as the Jim Croce song I Got A Name written by Academy governor Charles Fox & Norman Gimbel for the 1973 feature The Last American Hero. Listen to both tracks for a comparison after the jump and check out our previous article for the other fourteen titles remaining on the Original Songs shortlist. The soundtrack album for Better Man, including Forbidden Road, will be released on December 27 by Columbia Records. The movie directed by Michael Gracey and starring Williams himself, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Damon Herriman, Alison Steadman & Kate Mulvaney will be released in select theaters on December 25 by Paramount Pictures and expand nationwide on January 10.