Sting Aiming for 'Old-Fashioned' Oscar

Sting performs in Portland on May 25,2001

When Sting wrote "Until" for Kate & Leopold, he didn't think the studio would like it, and he couldn't imagine that it would earn him his second straight Oscar nomination.

"It was so old-fashioned that I thought they'd just say, 'No,'" he says. "They, in fact, loved it and they sent it to the Golden Globes that day, which was the last day it could've qualified, and I got in and then we won it."

With that victory, Sting might just have themomentumto win the Oscar, too.

Last year, he was up for a song he'd written for the animated film The Emperor's New Groove. Bob Dylan ended up winning for "Things Have Changed" from Wonder Boys.

This year, Sting is up against songs by Paul McCartney, Enya, Randy Newman and Diane Warren. And he's pleased to be in such company.

"You know I was nominated last year, I didn't win, of course, but I had such a great time," he said. "I'm going to have a good time regardless. But when you think how many songs are written for the movies in a year and I saw the list - there were hundreds and hundreds of songs. To be chosen as one of five, you know, that's pretty good, and, um, that's enough."

There are big names competing in this category. Newman'snodfor "If I Didn't Have You (from Monsters Inc.) is his seventh nomination forBest Original Song. It's the sixth nod for Diane Warren, who is nominated for "There You'll Be" (from Pearl Harbor).

And it's the the third time around for McCartney, who wrote the theme song for Vanilla Sky. He was nominated in 1973 for "Live and Let Die" and won Best Original Song Score for the Beatles hit "Let It Be" in 1970.

IrishsongstressEnya is the only first-time nominee in the bunch, weighing in with "May It Be" from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,, a song she wrote along with Nichy Ryan and Roma Ryan.

But win or lose, you can probably expect Sting to do some more songwriting for the movies.

"When you've screened a movie, it's much easier to write a song than to just be thinking, 'What the hell am I going to write about?' The movie tells you the mood. It tells you the plot. It tells you the characters," he says. "You just have to reflect those elements."