Emily Blunt is a big star as an actress, though apparently not big enough to warrant a Best Actress nomination for herself (seriously, what the hell?) and while Mary Poppins Returns certainly isn’t her first musical performance, it seems it was decided that Emily Blunt singing the song that brought tears to the audience in the theater wouldn’t be enough to increase the Oscar telecast’s struggling ratings.
Hopefully the ratings were helped because the song was missing something.
I’m assuming that since the show has no host this year, the feeling that the broadcast needed as many big stars as possible was probably driving most of the decisions.