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A shot from "Alone Yet Not Alone"

UPDATED: Joni Eareckson Tada tells THR allegations of backroom dealings by the song's well-connected writers are false and insists no one "pushed their influence."

As a mini-controversy develops about an Oscar-nominated song from a microbudget Christian film called Alone Yet Not Alone that few people saw, the singer, Joni Eareckson Tada, is confessing that she's as surprised as anyone that the Academy has recognized such an obscure song.

Eareckson Tada is a 64-year-old quadriplegic who runs a charitable organization that distributes wheelchairs to kids in developing nations. She's a devout Christian who has little to do with the entertainment industry and rarely goes to the movies. She grew up singing hymns but has no professional training. And her lung capacity is just 51 percent of what it ought to be -- so weak, in fact, that her husband needed to push on her diaphragm while she recorded the Oscar-nominated song to give her enough breath to hit the high notes.
"I'm the least likely candidate to record a song for a movie, I'll tell you that up front, so it's amazing," she tells The Hollywood Reporter. "It's amazing enough that a family-friendly movie with a Christian theme is nominated in any category for an Academy Award. Besides The Blind Side, which was wonderful, it's just not the norm."