Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out awards to the best and brightest filmmakers, actors, cinematographers, writers, makeup artists, and composers. They don’t always get it right, but they do get it right more often than the Grammys, so that’s something. Since 1935, the Academy has been handing out an Oscar for Best Original Song. Con Conrad and Herb Magidson won the inaugural award for “The Continental” from The Gay Divorcee, and lyricists and composers such as Johnny Mercer, Randy Newman, Giorgio Moroder, Henry Mancini, Burt Bacharach, and Elton John have won multiple awards for their work.
In the spirit of tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony, I’ve decided to put together a batch of 15 Best Original Song winners that I think are among the best of the best in the category’s 90-year history. I couldn’t in good faith put “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Call Me Irresponsible,” or “White Christmas” in this ranking because the Oscar-winning versions of those two songs are not, in my opinion, the definitive versions. And I did (mostly) take into account whether or not these 15 songs deserved to win in their respective years. At the end of the day, these are just 15 Oscar-winning songs that I really like, all of which can stand on their own outside of the film they were made for. That’s the criteria I’m working with (except for one entry, but don’t worry about that). Before we get to the list, here are some great songs that were nominated for Best Original Song and didn’t win but should’ve: “Live and Let Die” (1973); “Rainbow Connection” (1979); “9 to 5” (1980); “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” (1984); “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” (1995); “That Thing You Do!” (1996); “Accidentally in Love” (2004); and “Mystery of Love” (2017).
Honorable Mention: “Man or Muppet” (The Muppets, 2011)
In a perfect, just world, this list would include Jason Segel’s song “Dracula’s Lament” from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But Segel’s duet (in character as Gary) with Walter (Peter Linz) in The Muppets will do just fine instead. Not only did it win a Best Original Song Oscar, it was nominated for a Grammy Award, too. Reflecting on their true identities as, you guessed it, man and muppet, Gary and Walter grapple with romantic desire and interpersonal sacrifice. While it’s a piano ballad for a kid-oriented movie, Segel takes Bret McKenzie’s songwriting and turns “Man or Muppet” into something that has resonance in any and all generations. The song has got heart, as most Muppet things do, and never once feels ham-fisted or outrageous. Sure, its only competition was “Real in Rio” from Rio, but sometimes the Academy does reward songs that are inventive, uncomplicated ideas rather than the bait-y, ring-kissing fluff that’s been nominated in recent years.
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15. “My Heart Will Go On” (Titanic, 1997)
18 million worldwide sales and four Grammy wins (including Record of the Year and Song of the Year) doesn’t do “My Heart Will Go On” enough justice. The song was a #1 hit in 30 countries. 30. Mind you, Billboard only measures chart stats in about 40 countries. That’s how big “My Heart Will Go On” was three decades ago. Celine Dion, who is, undoubtedly, one of the most talented and beloved singers in the history of recorded music, gave Titanic its soul. Do I think it’s the greatest song ever made? I don’t. But I do see it as one of those movie ballads that has somehow out-performed its source material. Sure, Titanic made a lot of money and won a lot of awards (11 Oscars, to be exact, which is tied for the most ever by one film), but “My Heart Will Go On” is a glass-shattering pop cultural treasure. Not only is it responsible for one of the greatest key changes ever, but it’s become Dion’s signature tune, an impressive feat considering that she also released “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” “I’m Your Angel,” and “That’s the Way It Is” around the same time. But a big movie needs a big theme.
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14. “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” (Arthur, 1981)
Christopher Cross’ music has always been hit-or-miss for me. I’ve never been particularly keen on “Sailing,” nor do I think his debut album should have won Album of the Year in 1980. But, his piano ballad “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do),” written for Arthur the movie, has the smoke—and I can fully understand why it won Best Original Song at the Oscars and the Golden Globes. When I was getting ready to travel to New York City with my best friends as an eager 18-year-old, I listened to “Arthur’s Theme” over and over and over—hoping that, one day, I could live in a moment as euphoric as the “when you get caught between the moon and New York City” line. There’s a real magic in this song, one that not even I, a Christopher Cross naysayer, can ignore—nor do I ever want to.
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13. “Moon River” (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961)
I remember being 17 and watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time and, in a flash, becoming transfixed by Audrey Hepburn’s performance of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River.” While Frank Ocean would later cover the track and re-introduce it to my generation, Hepburn’s original rendition remains the most powerful. Its inclusion in the film makes no sense plot-wise, but I’m fine with looking the other way—because it’s just simply too beautiful a tune to have any real gripe with, and the image of Hepburn singing it on Holly Golightly’s fire escape is just picture-perfect. And much of that is because of Hepburn, whose delicate and untrained voice emphasized the sincerity of “Moon River.” Paramount Pictures reportedly wanted to remove the song from the film altogether, to which Mancini vehemently refused. I think we’re all lucky that Mancini won that battle.
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12. “Flashdance…What a Feeling” (Flashdance, 1983)
Unlike “Maniac,” Irene Cara’s theme song from the movie Flashdance holds up. Her vocals can be heard on “Fame,” which won the Oscar for the Fame theme three years earlier, but “Flashdance…What a Feeling” made her a total, if perhaps brief, star. She won a Grammy and an Oscar for the song, and it’s a marvelous tune that doesn’t simply encapsulate the film it’s in; it solidifies the pop movement in the 1980s completely. “All alone, I have cried silent tears of pride,” Cara sings, “in a world made of steel, made of stone.” Are you kidding me? What a gorgeous, soulful anthem composed by the “Father of Disco” Giorgio Moroder and co-penned by Cara and Keith Forsey.
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11. “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969)
Who can forget B.J. Thomas’ voice at the center of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” the all-time-classic film song written by pop dynamo Burt Bacharach and his collaborator Hal David? Though I prefer the song’s appearance in Spider-Man 2, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” is a tune that’s impossible to dislike in any venue. It brings a light but perfect contrast to William Goldman’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid script. The song is a simple story, as the song’s narrator forgoes all worries by embracing the hope that happiness will soon come, and Thomas really sells it with his sincere singing performance. “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” became a #1 hit in the US, Canada, and Norway and rightfully won the Oscar.
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10. “Shallow” (A Star Is Born, 2018)
I do prefer Judy Garland’s A Star Is Born over Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s, but “Shallow” was an instant-classic upon its arrival in 2018. By the time the remake hit theaters, Gaga was already one of the biggest pop stars in the world, though she hadn’t released (what I would consider to be) a great record since 2013’s Artpop. The movie cemented her status as an icon, and “Shallow” was a rejuvenating track. Not only is it a terrifically imperfect song (that bridge, are you kidding me; Cooper singing off key while Gaga holds the dramatic line), but it’s a brilliant, conversational storytelling device, as Gaga wrote it from the perspective of her character Ally and dove far into her and Jackson’s (Cooper) on-screen relationship. It went to #1 in a bunch of countries, earned 90 platinum certifications worldwide, and is one of the most successful Oscar-winning songs ever (though I would not dismiss any arguments that Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “All the Stars” deserved the W here). The formula just works sometimes. I’d like to also shout out the band on “Shallow,” Lukas Nelson & the Promise of the Real. What a crew.
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9. “Things Have Changed” (Wonder Boys, 2000)
I love Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, though I dislike the Curtis Hanson-directed movie adaptation of it. But I’m a fan of Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed,” which he penned exclusively for the film. The track came three years after Dylan’s Daniel Lanois-produced return-to-form album Time Out of Mind. With a musical about-face around him, Dylan sings about getting a lap dance from a woman with “assassin’s eyes” and “standing on the gallows with my head in a noose.” It’s a vivid, bluesy, apocalyptic thrill-ride brimming with poetry that’s hot to the touch. “All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie,” Dylan declares. While accepting the award via satellite in Australia, he said, “I want to thank the members of the Academy who were bold enough to give me this award for this song, which obviously is a song that doesn’t pussyfoot around nor turn a blind eye to human nature.”
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8. “The Way We Were” (The Way We Were, 1973)
“The Way We Were” put Barbra Streisand’s music career back on the map in 1973 when it won an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Grammy Award. It’s likely Streisand’s seminal work, up there with her award-winning work in Funny Girl on Broadway and on-screen. Written for Sydney Pollack’s film, “The Way We Were” is among the greatest ballads of all time, not just in the history of film. It caught fire in the real world too, going platinum and moving a million copies in the United States alone. The song’s bridge—“If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we?”—is a work of art, as is the “misty watercolor memories of the way we were” line. You could put that on a postcard.
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7. “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp” (Hustle & Flow, 2005)
Look, I’m a Three 6 Mafia fan, so “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp” was always going to land for me. And it landed for the Academy in 2005. Now, its competition wasn’t all too fierce: York’s “In the Deep” (Crash) and Dolly Parton’s “Travelin’ Thru” (Transamerica) didn’t present the voting body with too much of a challenge. Maybe the Academy didn’t want to screw up the winner a year after not giving the award to Counting Crows for “Accidentally in Love.” But Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” winning Best Original Song a few years prior opened the door for rap music to be a serious perennial contender in the category, even though no rap songs have one since Three 6 Mafia took home the statue for Hustle & Flow 21 years ago. But the genre’s absence at film’s biggest night shouldn’t erase the truth: “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp” is a Southern rap classic that works in and out of the context of the film it was written for.
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6. “What Was I Made For?” (Barbie, 2023)
Between the Barbie movie’s release in July 2023 and Billie Eilish’s Best Original Song win at the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024, “What Was I Made For?” was inescapable. Conceived by Eilish, her brother Finneas, Andrew Wyatt, and Mark Ronson for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film, the track became the first recording since Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” to win an Oscar for Best Original Song and a Grammy for Song of the Year. As overplayed as it was just a few years ago, I will stand on my business about “What Was I Made For?”: It’s a song that, while written for a movie, lingers thoroughly outside the confines of its source material. It’s a track that pulled Eilish and Finneas out of a long bout with writer’s block and galvanized what would become her terrific third album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, and it’s a perfect ballad. It’s free of climax, instead powered by its own never-ending heartbreak. Whether it’s for the narration of a doll’s final act or as Eilish’s own gesture of self-examination, “What Was I Made For?” was, and is, so affecting because the melody leaves no room for anything but emotion. “I don’t know how to feel,” Eilish admits, puncturing through the melancholy without resolve. Few pop stars can get to that place so effortlessly.
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5. “Lose Yourself” (8 Mile, 2002)
I don’t regret my childhood Eminem phase, if only because it turned me on to the freestyle rap battle sequence in 8 Mile. In my mind, that scene is the best thing he has ever done. Sure, his three-album run at the beginning of the 21st century (The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, and The Eminem Show) was pretty good, but they didn’t inspire me to start scribbling nonsense on crumpled up notepad sheets. The “smalltown kid tries to be a rapper” epidemic of the late 2000s/early 2010s owes a lot of its steam to Eminem’s origin film. But the best thing 8 Mile ever gave the world was its original song, “Lose Yourself.” Generally speaking, it’s probably Eminem’s greatest non-“Stan” track, if not one of the best rap songs of all time. And, of course, it gave Eminem’s Detroit restaurant Mom’s Spaghetti its name. But “Lose Yourself” blew up so big that most people forgot it was written for a movie. It won an Oscar, a Grammy, a VMA, and a Critics’ Choice Award, went #1 in 20 countries, and sold 13 million copies. It also marked the first time a rap song won Best Original Song, beating out U2 in doing so, and it was the first rap song to ever be nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammys. And to think, when he was announced as the Oscar winner, Eminem was at home sleeping on the couch while his daughter watched cartoons.
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4. “Over the Rainbow” (The Wizard of Oz, 1939)
“Over the Rainbow” is so ubiquitous in our popular culture that it’s easy to forget where it came from, the rightfully always-relevant The Wizard of Oz. Perhaps a renewed appreciation for Dorothy and Toto, thanks to this decade’s Wicked popularity, has helped “Over the Rainbow” remain beloved, but let’s not act like Judy Garland performing the tune almost 90 years ago guaranteed it a long and wonderful shelf life. Garland, in her brief time with us, proved to be among the most gifted of her kind, and “Over the Rainbow” was vocal pop before anyone knew what to call it. So many writers and players stand on the shoulders of Harold Arlen’s composing and Yip Harburg’s lyricism nearly a century later. I hope to go there one day, to someplace where there isn’t any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place? In the company of “Over the Rainbow” there might just be.
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3. “Theme from Shaft” (Shaft, 1971)
Blaxploitation flicks gave us many great soundtracks: Black Caesar (James Brown), Trouble Man (Marvin Gaye), Across 110th Street (Bobby Womack), and Coffy (Roy Ayres) are just a few of the best ones. But Shaft was more score than soundtrack, and it’s a pretty good one—you can thank Isaac Hayes for that, whose theme song may be the only thing that most folks know and recognize from the film. Hayes had already made Hot Buttered Soul by then, which I think is the greatest soul album that not enough people consider the greatest of all time, but his “Theme from Shaft” composition is, without a doubt, a funk masterpiece. Wah-wah guitars, big piano notes, steamy brass, orchestral drama—the song’s got it all, and the groove all but seals the record’s perfection long before Hayes even utters a word. “Theme from Shaft” is the only Blaxploitation film song to reach #1 on the Hot 100. Now, most #1 hit movie songs aren’t very good. Rarely are they enjoyable. But “Theme from Shaft” arrived in 1971 and sounded like the future.
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2. “Take My Breath Away” (Top Gun, 1986)
Top Gun had hits, obviously, thanks to Kenny Loggins being the premier ‘80s film soundtrack singer. “Playing With the Boys,” in my opinion, was worthy of the Best Original Song Oscar, though it wasn’t even nominated. And, like, sure, “Danger Zone” or whatever. Thankfully, that year’s top music in film prize went to Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” the best song from the Top Gun soundtrack (though I do love Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love” from The Karate Kid Part II). Before the film, Berlin’s highest-charting single in the U.S. had been “No More Words,” which reached #23 in 1984. They were an average synth-pop band from LA, led by vocalist Terri Nunn, but “Take My Breath Away” turned them into a household name. Top Gun co-producer Jerry Bruckheimer had previously tapped Giorgio Moroder and lyricist Tom Whitlock to pen the film’s theme song, which Loggins recorded, and he was so pleased with the result that he returned to the two musicians and asked them to write another tune. “Take My Breath Away” was so good upon arrival that director Tony Scott added a new romance scene between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis into the movie just so he could feature it. Synth-pop ballads don’t get much better than this.
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1. “Streets of Philadelphia” (Philadelphia, 1993)
Admittedly, I did put this list together just so I could say that “Streets of Philadelphia” is the greatest Best Original Song winner of all time. I look at the previous 14 entries here and I see many songs that have transcended the films they were made for, but Bruce Springsteen’s theme song for Jonathan Demme’s AIDS crisis flick is head-and-shoulders above. Demme approached Springsteen about contributing a song, saying, “I want it to play in malls.” Springsteen said back, “I’m not very good at scores.” But he didn’t need to be good, he just needed to be Bruce. After a world tour, Springsteen returned to his Beverly Hills house and recorded a demo with a drum machine, synthesizer, and Tommy Sims, Springsteen’s touring bassist at the time, on backup vocals. He assembled a powerful crew at A&M Studios in LA, calling on jazz vocalist “Little” Jimmy Scott and saxophonist Ornette Coleman. But that version of “Streets of Philadelphia” is only heard briefly in the movie, when Beckett (Tom Hanks) leaves Joe’s (Denzel Washington) office. What plays over Philadelphia’s opening credits is that demo tape of Springsteen and Sims, a recording that went to #9 on the Hot 100 and nabbed Springsteen the Academy Award, as he beat out Neil Young’s even sadder “Philadelphia” (which would be #1 on this list had it been the winner). Demme said later on that he and his wife cried the first time they heard “Streets of Philadelphia,” when lines like “a thousand miles just to slip this skin” and “will we leave each other alone like this” reached them. I visit the song often, too. Every second of it is as solemn, subtle, and sympathetic as ever.
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