Songwriter Bobby Lopez wins 2nd Oscars, makes EGOT history
He’s been called ‘very funny’ by his playwright and songwriting friends.
Lopez and his wife Kristen Anderson recently won the Oscars Best Original Song for “Remember Me” from the movie “Coco.” Four years ago, the pair won their first Oscars for the same category for the hit “Let it Go,” which was the signature anthem in the Disney movie “Frozen.”
Lopez has called this gust of winning “just a statistical coincidence.”
Born in Greenwich Village, Lopez went to school in Manhattan. At an early age, he began to exhibit more than passing interest in music. He began to study piano and the sax and was starting to write some songs.
He attended Hunter College in high school and finished his Bachelor of Arts in English at Yale University in Connecticut. After college, he went back to his parents’ home in NYC as he went about looking for jobs and assessing his career options. Always, he would surrender to the pull of songwriting.
“Right out of college I lived with my mom and dad,” Lopez said in an interview with Yale Daily News. “I lived with them for four years after college. They were extremely supportive of me. Without that, I don’t know where I’d be.”
His parents are Greenwich Village oldtimers Katherine Lowe and Frank Lopez, whose roots can be traced to Iloilo. They were married more than 45 years until Katherine passed away in 2017 from lung cancer.
Top photo: In 2014, an Oscars Best Original Song for “Frozen.” Below: The same award for the animated film “Coco” in 2018. Photo: NPR.org
In The New York Times obituary, Katherine was described as: “She cared more that her sons love their work and tried their best to succeed, despite the promise of almost certain financial failure. Fortunately, that did not happen. Bobby co-wrote the Tony-award winning “Avenue Q,” “Book of Mormon,” and with Kristen, received an Oscar for the songs from “Frozen;” Billy won Emmys for music and writing in television’s “Wonder Pets and Peg + Cat” and recently launched a new series, Welcome to the Wayne, on Nickelodeon.
His brother Billy is the other talented composer in the family.
Bobby and Kristen met at the Lehman Engel’s Musical Theatre Workshop for aspiring songwriters. They married in 2003. During the last Oscars, the family, with their two daughters Annie and Katie, attended simply to enjoy the evening, and not really expecting for Bobby and Kristen to win.
On the heels of the success of “Avenue Q” and “The Book or Mormon,” Lopez drew a parallel between writing songs and having a family.
He told YDN: “Most of my work has in common … this accessibility and simplicity that’s good for comedy in general. It doesn’t upstage the lyrics. Strong melody. [It] doesn’t feel terribly different. It’s just using different colors.
“It’s the same experience of having a family, yet being an adult. You have one responsibility caring for a kid and wanting to keep the kid’s sense of wonder, but you’re still someone who’s went through college and had adult experiences and wants to write about that too.” – Cristina DC Pastor
© The FilAm 2018
