"Our Town" is a song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

 used in the 2006

2006 in film

- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...

 Disney

Walt Disney Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...

·Pixar

Pixar

Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...

 film Cars

Cars (film)

Cars is a 2006 American animated family film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Joe Ranft. It is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and Pixar's final, independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney...

.
It was written by longtime Pixar contributor Randy Newman

Randy Newman

Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....

, and performed by James Taylor

James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....

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The song is a ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

 that recounts the economic

Economy

An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...

 decline of the fictional town of Radiator Springs after the creation of Interstate Highway 40.

The song became immensely popular, and later became an anthem for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

At the 49th Grammy Awards (given on February 11, 2007) the song won the award for Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media

Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media

The Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media has been awarded since 1988 and is awarded to songs written for films, television, video games or other visual media...

. The same night, Newman's work for Cars won for Music in an Animated Feature Production

Annie Award for Music in an Animated Feature Production

The Annie Award for Music in an Animated Feature Production is an award given annually, except 2002, to the best music in an animated feature film, theatrical or direct-to-video. It began in 1997 as the Annie Award for Best Individual Achievement: Music in a Feature/Home Video Production...

, at the 34th Annie Awards

34th Annie Awards

The ceremony for the 34th Annual Annie Awards, honoring the best in animation in 2006, was held on February 11, 2007 at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California.The nominations were announced on December 4, 2006.Winners are marked in bold text....

. The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to "I Need to Wake Up

I Need to Wake Up

"I Need to Wake Up" is a song by Melissa Etheridge, written for the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. It is the first instance of a documentary film winning the Best Song category, and it notably beat three other nominated songs from the musical film Dreamgirls.Etheridge received the...

" from An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he has given more than a thousand times.Premiering at the...

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