5 Classic Rock Stars Who Were Snubbed For Best Original Song At The Oscars

There are a few stars in the classic rock pantheon — the musical minds and voices behind the guitar-fueled standards of the 1960s and 1970s — who were still left wanting for an Academy Award, shunned by voters who were willing to give them a nomination but nothing more. It was a major accomplishment for film producers to even land artists of such high esteem and caliber, and to persuade them to compose and then perform a song to complement or soundtrack their movie. They may have even turned out to be hit songs, but one prize they couldn't pull in for their privileged creators: the Oscar for Best Original Song. Grammy Awards, platinum records, No. 1 singles, and endless fame and accolades have come their way, but never that golden statuette.

Here are some giants of classic rock, all inductees into the sometimes-controversial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who found themselves somewhat surprisingly left empty-handed during their one or two shots at Oscars glory. Here are five classic rock artists who got snubbed for the Best Original Song prize at the Academy Awards.

Neil Young has written and performed a number of searing ballads and angry hard rockers, and "Old Man," his 1972 classic, nailed the meaning of life. His work is evocative or even cinematic, so it tracks that Jonathan Demme, a filmmaker who directed concert films like "Stop Making Sense" for Talking Heads, would enlist someone like Young to conjure a song to play over the end credits of "Philadelphia." Young's haunting piano ballad, also called "Philadelphia," concluded the tragic and affecting legal drama about a lawyer with AIDS, which won Tom Hanks his first of two back-to-back Best Actor Oscars in 1994. 

"Philadelphia" is the rare film with two title-referencing theme songs. Both of them were by towering icons of 1970s American rock music, and both earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. But only one could win, and it wasn't Young's "Philadelphia." Voters opted for Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" instead, denying Young an Oscar.

Van Morrison has lived many musical lives. He first came to prominence in the 1960s as the leader of the sloppy hard rock band Them, best known for classic rock staples like "Gloria" and "Here Comes the Night." After showing off his raspy pipes on the sweet and enduring 1967 Top 10 hit "Brown Eyed Girl," Morrison became more of an introspective singer-songwriter type.

Raised in Belfast, Morrison got the call from writer-director Kenneth Branagh to compose and perform a tune for his 2021 film "Belfast," about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. At the 2022 Academy Awards, Morrison was rewarded for his efforts with a nomination for Best Original Song, for "Down to Joy." The competition in the category was steep, with a Beyoncé song from "King Richard," a tune from the Disney animated smash "Encanto," and the ultimate winner, "No Time to Die" from the James Bond movie of that name composed and performed by white-hot pop star Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O'Connell.

As half of Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon was responsible for some of the 1960s' most enduring folk rock hits as well as one of the decade's most prominent soundtracks. The duo's songs were laced throughout 1967's "The Graduate," including "The Sound of Silence," "Mrs. Robinson," and "April Come She Will." Those didn't get Oscar nominations because Simon and Garfunkel came up with them before "The Graduate" entered production. (To be eligible for an Oscar, a song must have been written specifically for the movie it's used in.)

In 1972, Paul Simon took his song "Mother and Child Reunion" to No. 4 on the pop chart. The singer-songwriter wouldn't have similar luck at the 2003 Academy Awards with a similar song with similar themes and lyrics. He wrote and recorded "Father and Daughter" for the soundtrack of the Nickelodeon animated series spinoff movie "The Wild Thornberrys." Facing off in the Best Original Song category against U2's "The Hands That Built America" for Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" and a newly written showtune for the film adaptation of "Chicago," Simon's song and all the others were undone by "Lose Yourself" from Eminem's loose biopic "8 Mile," the first rap song to ever win the prize.

Paul McCartney technically did win an Academy Award, back in 1971. In the category of Best Music, Original Song Score, the Beatles documentary "Let It Be" took home that prize. The Beatles had already broken up by that point, and nobody, not even McCartney, showed up to the Oscars ceremony to collect the trophy. Quincy Jones accepted the award on the band's behalf. 

Independently of the Beatles, McCartney has been nominated for Best Original Song twice, and he didn't win either time. In 1973, "Live and Let Die," credited to McCartney's band Wings and created for the James Bond film of the same name, hit No. 2 on the pop chart. Less than a year later, that song, credited to songwriters Paul and Linda McCartney, was nominated for Best Original Song. It ultimately lost to "The Way We Were" from Sydney Pollack's romantic drama, both featuring Barbra Streisand. In 2002, McCartney's titular "Vanilla Sky" song was defeated by fellow classic rocker Randy Newman with "If I Didn't Have You" from "Monsters, Inc."

Formerly the frontman for Genesis in its early and most experimental and progressive phases, Peter Gabriel departed the band in the mid-1970s to record often moody, atmospheric, and futuristic music under his own name. Concurrent with his solo career, Gabriel has composed the scores for several films, including "Birdy," "Rabbit-Proof Fence," "Birds Likes Us," and "The Last Temptation of Christ," which earned a sole Oscar nomination for director Martin Scorsese. Despite a large body of high-profile film work, Gabriel has only been nominated for an Academy Award once.

Thomas Newman composed the music for Disney/Pixar's contemplative dystopian animated feature "WALL-E," which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He worked with progressive rock artist Gabriel on a song that would fit in with the rest of the film's music, and that composition, "Down to Earth," was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2009 Oscars. There were only three nominees that year, and "Down to Earth" was the only one not from "Slumdog Millionaire." That film's "Jai Ho" took home the big prize for composer A.R. Rahman and lyricist Gulzar.