Bruce Springsteen Says His Oscar for This Classic Rock Song, Written in Only a Few Days, Was a Fluke

Bruce Springsteen has won dozens of awards over the course of his career, from an Academy Award to a Tony Award to 20 different Grammy Awards. Recently, he spoke about winning an Oscar for his hit song "Streets of Philadelphia" after it appeared in the 1993 legal drama, Philadelphia. The film, which starred Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, was about a man suing his former law firm after getting fired for having HIV.

On June 13, when appearing at the Storytellers event at Tribeca Festival, Springsteen received the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award. As reported by PEOPLE, he spent time at the event speaking with Bono about his career and mentioned that the only Oscar he won was "kind of a fluke."

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"It really was because Jonathan Demme called me up and said, 'I need a rock song for the movie I just made,'" Springsteen explained. "And he told me a little bit about the film, and he sent me just an opening two minutes or so of it. I tried to write him a rock song when I just couldn't. So I went next door, and I had a little synthesizer and a little drum machine and [in] a couple of days I wrote the song."

Springsteen continued, "I sent it to him, and he roughed it into the film, and then I sent him a real version, and he threw that out and kept the rough version that I sent him, and then we won the Oscar."

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The song went on to become a worldwide success, peaking at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and becoming his highest-charting single in the UK. It was even more popular in other countries, becoming a No. 1 hit in Germany, France, and Austria. In addition to the Oscar, "Streets of Philadelphia" won multiple Grammys and a Golden Globe. The song is also included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll."

As Springsteen said, "It was really one of those things. If you do good things, good things happen. So Jonathan Demme, who is deeply missed and was a wonderful, wonderful man, incredible filmmaker, kind of invited me into his film, and I guess we lucked out."

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This story was originally published June 21, 2026 at 9:25 AM.