U2 to Perform ‘Ordinary Love’ on the Oscars

Academy confirms booking first reported by TheWrap

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The Academy has confirmed that U2 will perform their nominated song “Ordinary Love,” from the film “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” on this year’s Oscar show.

The booking was first reported by TheWrap on Monday.

Also read: Inside the Oscar Nominees Luncheon: Bono Tells a Secret, David O. Russell Makes a Deal

It will be the band’s second appearance on the Oscar show. The first came in 2003, when it was nominated for “The Hands That Built America” from “The Gangs of New York,” but lost to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”

During that performance, lead singer Bono changed some of the words of the song to comment on the war in Iraq, which had just begun.

The band wrote “Ordinary Love” in honor of Nelson Mandela, with whom they began working at the very beginning of their careers.

“U2 did its first anti-Apartheid show in 1979,” singer Bono told TheWrap. “And really, throughout the years following, from the ‘Make Poverty History’ movement, debt cancellation, universal access to retroviral drugs, he was our bandleader.

“He is no longer around, and that’s a hole we’re never going to be able to fill. But at least when it came to writing a song for a movie about his life, we could try to feel useful.”

Also read: Why U2’s Bono Considered Nelson Mandela His ‘Bandleader’

Last month, U2 won the best-song Golden Globe for “Ordinary Love.”

The Academy and Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron previously announced that Pharrell Williams would perform his nominated song “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2” on the Oscars, and that Idina Menzel would perform “Let It Go” from “Frozen.”

The fourth nominated song is “The Moon Song” from “Her,” which is performed during the film by Scarlett Johansson and in the end credits by its co-writer, Karen O.

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