The music categories at the Academy Awards are an easy target for criticism. (As Alfred Newman famously said, “Everybody knows their job and music, too.”) Everybody has an opinion. And over the years the Academy has endlessly tinkered with the music categories, always in the hopes of muting the criticism but also hoping to help voters make the right choices in honoring songs and scores. Here’s a look at some of Oscar’s strange choices over the years; a rundown of changes in the music rules over the years; a more recent lament over the demise of the “adaptation” category which, if reinstated, would offer a home for scores that don’t easily fit the other categories; and a look at classic songs that probably should have been nominated but weren’t.