5 Classic Rock Stars Who Won Oscars For Best Original Song

Following their legendary hit-making runs of the 1960s and 1970s, many of the most dominant artists of the classic rock era turned to writing songs for movie soundtracks. Along with writing good tunes that summarized or meshed well with the on-screen narratives, the big-name stars probably benefited from decades of building goodwill from Hollywood's power players. After all, those songs earned them at least one nomination for best original song — the Academy Award reserved for tracks composed expressly for a particular movie.

There was a time when movie soundtracks were largely handled by theatrically trained songwriting duos or prolific composers, who wrote songs for the more musically forward films of Hollywood's golden age. But eventually, movie music was slowly taken over by the stars of pop and rock. Here are some of the most important and best-selling classic rock artists who segued from making epic rock songs you can still hear on the radio today to creating poignant and charming movie tunes that won them the Oscar — the most illustrious musical prize in the movie industry. 

Bob Dylan came up in the New York City folk scene in the early 1960s and was soon hailed as a modern-day troubadour and a spokesperson for the boomer generation. A rock icon for freewheeling and poetic songs like "Like a Rolling Stone," "Tangled Up in Blue," and "Lay Lady Lay," Dylan became the only person in the world to have won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Golden Globe, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize in literature. Writing for film is a gig that Dylan rarely takes on outside of art and experimental movies, but he did once snag an Academy Award for best original song.

The best original song category at the 2001 Academy Awards included multiple rock legends of the past and the then-present, but only one — the most iconic of all — took home the Oscar. Bob Dylan wrote the music and lyrics for "Things Have Changed," which summed up the plot of the professor in the midlife crisis film "Wonder Boys." The legendary songwriter defeated Sting, the performer and co-writer of "My Funny Friend and Me" from "The Emperor's New Groove"; Randy Newman for "A Fool in Love" from "Meet the Parents"; and Björk's "I've Seen It All" from the dark musical "Dancer in the Dark."

A pop rock superstar in the early 1970s for her confessional, lived-in singer-songwriter tunes with an edge, Carly Simon hit No. 1 in 1972 with "You're So Vain" and then five years later almost repeated the feat when "Nobody Does It Better" stalled at No. 2. After Simon faded from the fore, she enjoyed a comeback in 1986 when "Coming Around Again / Itsy Bitsy Spider" became her first top 20 hit in six years. Recorded for the romantic drama "Heartburn," it represented a new niche for Simon: Composing songs for movies.

Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" was used in the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me," and it was nominated for best original song in 1978. But Simon only sang the track — she wasn't up for the Oscar because she didn't write it. When she did write and record an original tune, "Let the River Run," from the 1988 workplace comedy "Working Girl," she won the Academy Award for best original song.

Bruce Springsteen is one of the most respected figures in rock music going back about 50 years. Beloved for writing songs with gut-wrenching lyrical content that he unfailingly sings with passion and earnestness, it made sense for the singer-songwriter to use his skills to make music for movies and add to their emotional wallop. While Springsteen's songs were utilized for movie and TV soundtracks as early as the late 1970s, the musician didn't begin offering up original material for the screen until the 1990s. 

In 1994, he actually won that prized Oscar for his first original song for a movie, "Streets of Philadelphia." He created the moving, synth-driven ballad about loneliness and despair — also a top 10 pop hit — explicitly for use in "Philadelphia," a drama about a lawyer discriminated against for being HIV-positive. In 1996, Springsteen earned an Academy Award nomination for best original song for "Dead Man Walking" from the death row drama "Dead Man Walking."

A consistent major hitmaker throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Elton John wrote his first movie soundtrack in 1971 for "Friends." Then, in the 1990s, he took his first stab at crafting the music for an animated movie: Disney's blockbuster "The Lion King," for which he composed five original songs. Nominated for three collaborations with lyricist Tim Rice from "The Lion King" at the 1995 Academy Awards, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" — also a top 5 hit in the summer of 1994 — won the Oscar for best original song over "Circle of Life" and "Hakuna Matata." 

Fifteen years later, John served as an executive producer on "Rocketman," a narrative film that told the story of his musical life. He also wrote a song that capped the movie's action, "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again." That won John and his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin the best original song Oscar over another Disney tune, "Into the Unknown," from "Frozen II."

A third-generation composer, Randy Newman is a member of the family with the most Oscar nominations. Most of his nods came after he found fame as a pianist and singer-songwriter specializing in wry and sardonically witty tunes. His less melodically complex but lyrically arch songs are what made him famous, like the 1977 No. 2 hit "Short People" and the satirical 1983 single "I Love L.A.," an '80s flop that turned into a smash hit.

After being snubbed by voters for two decades, Newman finally won an Academy Award. Over the years, he'd been nominated for composing the score to "Ragtime," "The Natural," "Avalon," "Toy Story," "James and the Giant Peach," "Pleasantville," "A Bug's Life," and "Monsters, Inc." and for best original song for individual compositions in "Ragtime," "Parenthood," "The Paper," "Toy Story," "Babe: Pig in the City," "Toy Story 2," and "Meet the Parents." In the 2002 ceremony, Newman went home with the best original song Oscar for "If I Didn't Have You," written for "Monsters, Inc." He won the same Oscar in 2011 for "We Belong Together" from "Toy Story 3."