An astonishing number of major pop and rock artists are now contributing songs to documentaries. This year, nearly a fifth of all the songs entered for Oscar consideration came from non-fiction films, and some of those were written and/or performed by among the biggest names in music. For the lead story in this week’s special Variety Contenders issue, I interviewed several of those artists, including Sting (now Oscar-nominated with co-writer J. Ralph for a song in Jim: The James Foley Story), Tori Amos, Common, Trent Reznor and Diane Warren.