Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Delivers the Song That the Oscars Refused to Show You

The tradition at the Academy Awards of having the musicians behind each Oscar-nominated song perform a live version of the track with all the pageantry and production value of a theatrical musical number is always one of Oscar night’s most exciting and artful features — for me to poop on.

Compared to the other Oscar categories, Best Song always feels like a bit of an add-on and not a trophy that’s chased with nearly as much feverish intention as the acting categories. Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell didn’t exactly embark on the same press campaign to earn their second such Academy Award for the Barbie song “What Was I Made For?” at Sunday’s ceremony that Cillian Murphy did for his Best Actor win for Oppenheimer, and, since the presentation of the Best Song nominees is used as a bit of a palate cleanser and energy injection for the awards show itself, it’s more fun when the Best Song nominees don’t take themselves too seriously. Ryan Gosling certainly got the memo with his “I’m Just Ken” performance.

But as Lily Gladstone’s many online fans have demonstrated in the past few days, there is no more serious injustice in entertainment than an Oscars snub, and the Academy Awards’ Best Song category was conspicuously missing an important nomination. Yes, of course, I’m talking about Tiffany Topol’s tune “When It’s Us” from the animated movie Leo, written and directed by Robert Smigel and starring Adam Sandler. 

Thankfully, with the power of impeccable video editing, the official Triumph the Insult Comic Dog YouTube page uploaded a performance of the impactful song earlier this week, complete with Party City-looking costume changes, dancing lizards and Joey Fatone.

Honestly, the only thing missing from this extravagant, expertly choreographed and tastefully presented performance is an appearance from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog himself, but, seeing as Leo is technically a kids’ comedy, perhaps Smigel thought that his pup was too PG-13 for the music video. As the famous Star Wars: Attack of the Clones premiere segment demonstrated, Triumph isn’t child friendly — or, maybe, he’s just not man-child friendly.