At the 2022 Academy Awards this weekend, Disney’s Encanto fan favourite song ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ will be performed live with 10 characters on stage at once and singing at the same time.
It is the stand-out song of Encanto, if that is what you class as overplayed on the radio and embossed into the brains of everyone who is or isn’t a fan of songwriter and composer Lin Manuel Miranda’s work.
Essentially, we really need to stop talking about Bruno and let the real star shine. The one that is actually nominated for Best Original Song at the 2022 Awards, Dos Oruguitas.
Scroll through Twitter and you will see an army of Encanto fans that say We Don’t Talk About Bruno was robbed. It wasn’t robbed, die-hard Encanto fans are just very dramatic.
If it is a popularity contest, I can see how it is a valid argument to say We Don’t Talk About Bruno was robbed of being selected in this category. However, the crux of this argument is flawed, it’s not that it doesn’t deserve it. Quite the contrary, it’s an inventive piece of composition with epic vocal layering that we love Lin Manuel Miranda for. It’s just that if Dos Orugitas wins, it could be groundbreaking for the film industry.
Dos Oruguitas would be only the second non-English song to win Best Original Song at the Oscars, following the 2005 win ‘Al Otro Lado Del Rio’ by Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler from the film The Motorcycle Diaries.
Dos Oruguitas is a Spanish-language soft ballad sung by Colombian singer Yatra, which translates to “two caterpillars”. In Encanto, it is the soundtrack of the most emotional scene, a love story of Mirabel's Abuela and late grandfather. It is the true beating heart of the film.
In a Twitter post, Yatra shared his live reaction to the Oscar nominations exclaiming: “COLOMBIA WE ARE NOMINATED FOR THE OSCAR!”. Following the announcement, he took to a virtual press room to say: “to be one of the first Latinos to be at the Oscars ceremony singing in Spanish. It made me understand what the song transmits and how very important this is for our culture, not just for Columbians, but for Latinos in general”.
Rightfully, the song doesn’t give power to the English language in a highly sensitive moment. It doesn’t need to. Even as non-Spanish speakers, audiences are able to decipher the emotional message of the moment. It transcends language in that sense and crosses cultural barriers.
Even if we differ in which language we speak, what culture we have or what we look like — this raw idea of love is encapsulated in a Dos Oruguitas, and it’s a stroke of genius entering it into the Best Original Song category.
With competitors with Billie Eilish’ ‘No Time To Die’ from James Bond, and Beyonce and Dixson’s ‘Be Alive’ from King Richard – Dos Oruguitas has a strong chance of nabbing the top prize, despite it not being Encanto’s breakout song.
The ‘Best Original Song’ at the Oscars doesn’t need to be a popularity contest, nor should it be fabricated as that. It is purely based on the quality of the song nominated, and Dos Oruguitas deserves to be on the nominees' list.
So yes, we really need to stop talking about Bruno because there’s a hidden gem to be found with Dos Oruguitas and it deserves to rightfully shine.
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