Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Gaga Lose To ‘RRR’

The 2023 Golden Globe Awards ceremony took place last night (January 10), and while the proceedings are focused on TV and movies, music makes its way into the mix, too. Specifically, there are two music categories: Best Original Score, Motion Picture and Best Original Song, Motion Picture. The former was won by Justin Hurwitz’s work on Babylon.

As for the latter, songs by Taylor Swift (“Carolina” from Where The Crawdads Sing), Rihanna (“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), and Lady Gaga (“Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick) were in contention. None of those ended up winning, though. Instead, the Best Original Song award went to Kala Bhairava, M. M. Keeravani, and Rahul Sipligunj’s “Naatu Naatu,” a Telugu-language song from the hit 2022 Indian movie RRR.

While “Naatu Naatu” may not be backed by the star power of a song by Gaga, Rihanna, or Swift (among American/English-speaking audiences, at least), it has achieved massive popularity with over 111 million views on YouTube. That puts it right up there with its competitors: “Hold My Hand” has 138 million views while “Lift Me Up” is at about 92 million and “Carolina” has around 8 million.

Rihanna was in attendance and was a good sport, as she made sure to offer her congratulations to the folks behind RRR.

Meanwhile, RRR was also up for Best Picture, Foreign Language, but that award went to Argentina, 1985.

Find the full list of 2023 Golden Globe winners here and listen to “Naatu Naatu” below.