Having worked both in the music business and the film industry, Gregg Alexander — who is up for a Best Original Song Oscar this year for Begin Again's “Lost Stars,” and may be best known as the former frontman of the New Radicals, the band behind the ’90s hit “You Get What You Give” — has developed a strong opinion about the differences between the two entertainment forms and the way award nominees behave during prestigious events. In the film world, Kanye West's rude and childish interruption of Beck at the Grammys would never happen.

"The film community is so incredibly supportive of one another, and when they pontificate on their peers they’re incredibly generous of spirit, which I find is not always as present in the music world," says Alexander, who won a Grammy in 2003 for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals for "The Game of Love," a song he wrote for Santana’s Shaman album. “Sometimes music artists tend to be a little bit less generous about the motivations and the talent of their peers and/or rivals. Whereas actors and people in the film arts tend to want to look at and see the good in their peers and focus on the positive, instead of being snipey.”

Alexander says that the ability for musicians to record albums quickly in an insular environment prevents them from being part of a larger community. He references the Motown era as a time when artists all worked together and were supportive of one another, even when they were in competition. “Also, if you look back to the Laurel Canyon years with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and the Eagles, those artists really had great things to say about their peers.”

The publicized beefs, dis tracks, and lack of etiquette in the music industry, says Alexander, have risen because musicians today don’t live up to the standard of excellence of their predecessors and are clutching at straws to remain relevant. “I think that as the quality of the caliber of a lot of the music out there has gone down, it seems like the music is not as good, and by default the artists are more competitive and critical of each other,” he says. “I think maybe it might be a good lesson to the music world to take on more of that sense of community that the film world has.”

So far, Alexander’s experiences in film have been exceptional. About three years ago, Begin Again director John Carney, who had been a fan of New Radicals, got Alexander’s number from U2 vocalist Bono and cold-called him. Since then, Alexander has been on an upward trajectory.

"I kind of thought it was a crank call at first, because he had a strong Irish accent and said, ‘I really want you to do all the music for my film Can a Song Save Your Life?, which was the original title of the movie,” recalls Alexander. “It sounded like someone was playing a joke on me, but as we were talking I Googled his name and realized he was legit. That phone call lasted almost two hours. We talked about music and influences. There was an organic energy between us. We have a lot of the same feelings about music and a lot of our favorite artists are the same. We’re both big Prince fans, he loves Stevie Wonder, I love ’70s soul. We just hit it off.”

Carney sent Alexander the screenplay for Can a Song Save Your Life?, and the songwriter loved the story and felt it lent itself to a diverse soundtrack. He started writing songs in 2013, and one of the many tunes he worked on was “Lost Stars,” which he co-wrote with his former New Radicals bandmate, former child star Danielle Brisebois (who has written hits for Natasha Bedingfield, Clay Aiken, Kelly Clarkson, and others). At the time, Alexander wouldn’t have pegged “Lost Stars” as being the runaway hit for the soundtrack.

"I just didn’t have any expectations that anybody would connect with it, but the director really felt passionately about it and he used it three times in the film," Alexander says, adding that once it became a vehicle for Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and actress Keira Knightley, it took on a new dimension. "It ended up being the centerpiece of something that was really a music-driven film. And then it got some organic love because it wasn’t a big studio film with a huge budget, but the film was a sleeper hit that connected with a lot of the people that saw it and remembered the song."