Bond Themes - The Good, The Bad & The Thirsty

I always liked "All Time High." I think it was from "Octopussy." What a terrible name for a film. I never watched it because I envisioned the villain as some Human Centipede-like creature, but with eight vaginas. *shudder*

Goldeneye has the best theme song. Tina's vocals and that duh nuh nuh nuh at the beginning.

Goldfinger is the best.

It's very bitter and atonal— like the Brecht and Weill songs.

It's about an old courtesan telling young courtesans to avoid certain men. And it works up to an awful, angry climax.

R1, Octopussy is the heroine of the film, not the villain. It's also one of the best films in the franchise.

I am surprised my favorite of all is not by a woman--it's Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name." for "Casino Royale." Really a great song, great singer, and very moody and sets the tone beautifully for the rest of the film.

Goldfinger is a gem, but there are many others to discuss.

Do you think Madonna is P.O.d Billie didn't lift two fingers and got a Bond theme 2 or 3 years into her career?

Favorite James Bond theme song never actually used for a James Bond movie:

"History Repeating," by Propellerheads (featuring Miss Shirley Bassey)

Champagne for Lulu!

Oops--I meant to post this:

Thunderball by Tom Jones.

"Thunderball" by Tom Jones is great, as is "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra.

Bono and the Edge wrote GOLDENEYE!

Tina gives a fabulous vocal performance in that song.

Nobody Does It Better, one of the least Bond-sounding songs, and one of the best.

I always liked Gladys Knight's "License to Kill"

Alice Cooper recorded Man with The Golden Gun and it was cut and he was replaced by Lulu. Its quite different.

You Only Live Twice

R16 Alice Cooper and Lulu.

What a ludicrous conjunction of two non-talents.

There was a time when I hated Jack Black and Alicia Key's "Another Way to Die" but now I love it. Also love "For Your Eyes Only" and "License to Kill". Favourite end credit song, "If You Ask me To".

Hate Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name", Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" and Garbage's "The World is Not Enough".

Loved Radiohead's rejected song for "Spectre".

I didn't know Alice Cooper did a version of this. Liza Minnelli sings background vocals. Only in the 1970s.

Reading skills R20? See R16

We are 21 replies in and no one has mentioned Sheena Easton and For Your Eyes Only?

Skyfall. Not just the great song by Adele, but also the incredible opening credits by Daniel Kleinman.

I hated Adele's scooping on "Skyfall."

I thought Adele's Bond theme sounded very generic, like she listened to a bunch of classic Bond themes and then assembled an imitation. It was a way better than that choppy mess Alicia Keys performed for QoS. Now that was an ugly, harsh song. Chris Cornell had best song of the Daniel Craig movies imo.

The absolute worst is Sam Smith’s in Spectre. Shrill and he even sings fat.

Siouxsie should've sung this for Casino Royale

Honorable mention of The Pretenders doing Where Has Everybody Gone & If There Was A Man for Living Daylights.

I discovered the rejected track by Scott Walker around the time I watched Call Me By Your Name and I thought it fit that movie quite right.

I've always thought Sade's "Soldier of Love" would have made a fabulous Bond theme.

Greg made a boo-boo starting that other thread

"The World Is Not Enough," Garbage

Non talent?! Lulu had the biggest selling single of 1967, a single that drove the box office of the movie, not the other way around.

"GoldenEye," Miss Teenta Turnter

I have the soundtrack collection for the 50 year anniversary, with a second disc that has some of the best scores from the movie too.

Most of the theme songs are really great, I find. I'm a big fan of You Only Live Twice. The worst themes are the ones that try to sound too "Bond-y". I'd say one of the worst is Sheryl Crow's for "Tomorrow Never Dies". KD Lang originally did it (the song turns up in the end credits as "Surrender") and it's so much better than Sheryl's.

It's a pity they never got Goldfrapp to do one, as I think they were built to do one, without it sounding too much of a pastiche.

I love you Teenta, but you haven't got the range!

kd lang - Surrender (Tomorrrow Never Dies).

I will say, and people will disagree I know, but I find David Arnold a bit hacky. Like, he's not really doing anything new with the Bond scores, just trying to recreate old ones. That said, I do like some of the stuff he does, I'm just not that fussed with it at the same time. Whereas a lot of the stuff Barry did is amazing, as are the soundtracks not done by Barry like Live and Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me, which have different takes.

Matt Monro's "From Russia With Love," makes me want to tease my hair and do the Frug.

While I know we're talking about themes, to expand that to the scores in general, it's seriously worth checking out You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me. I think From Russia with Love is a great one too.

"Live and Let Die" lacks music for quite a lot of the movie. I guess George Martin couldn't work at the same pace as Barry.

I have a fondness for Live and Let Die, as it was the first Bond I ever saw as a little kid, watching with my father on TV and being scarred by the opening deaths. Now, I want a funeral like that, haha!

"From Russia With Love," Matt Monro, with vocals this time

R39 That 'theme song' has four different themes within it.

I also love the supernatural ending of Live and Let Die:

'No Time to Die' is getting some tired reviews

"Daniel Craig has more lines than he had in all his previous Bonds together"

"4 or 5 out of 10"

"Rami Malek could have been replaced by a marble statue who would've acted better"

"Diversity casting of token blacks woeful"

I love All Time High and the score in general of Octopussy. I think overall, Octopussy is such a great Bond movie. Great story, great locations, great female lead, an anti heroine. Great villain (Orlov).

The Living Daylights, Octopussy, and A View To A Kill. Those are my personal top three Bond movies.

A View to a Kill. My all time fave.

A View to a Kill is great. Also, the movie gets a lot of flack, and yes some of it is deserved, but I still find it enjoyable in so many parts, especially thanks to Christopher Walken and Grace Jones.

I enjoy Octopussy too. I think it's actually a really decent film, one that you forget sometimes, and then watch and think: "this is pretty damn good".

Someone above mentioned KD Lang’s Surrender but didn’t post the song, which is a shame, because it’s the ultimate homage to classic Bond themes and a real winner.

Yeah, absolutely R50! It's definitely a great song. And stands out even more when you hear the terrible Sheryl Crow song that replaced it!

(it was me who mentioned it but didn't post it, but someone else posted it shortly after, a video where someone imposed it over the credits like it should've appeared).

Was submitted, and rejected.

R52 that sounds SUPER cool but maybe too gritty and authentically rock for Bond.

"A View To A Kill" - Duran Duran

This is the only Bond theme to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

[quote]The absolute worst is Sam Smith’s in Spectre. Shrill and he even sings fat.

Nonsense! And I think the credit sequence is one of the best in the franchise: up there with Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and Quantum of Solace. Those tentacles are so fucking sexual. The credit sequence in No Time To Die really disappointed me: I kept redesigning it in my mind. Given the DNA theme they could have done something amazing with helixes and fluids and images flowing in to one another.

For Your Eyes Only's song is one the greats. Including the production with the underwater sounds and sonar pings at the start.

Sam Smith's is awful and in no way deserved an Oscar

R54, the story goes that Duran Duran got the job after one of the band members approached John Barry at a party, drunk, and asked when Barry was going to do a decent theme song again. He was referring to the run of slow ballads that had been done since The Spy Who Loved Me. Which is pretty unfair really. "A View to a Kill" is a great song, no doubt, but the four ballads prior to that are all good to excellent, I would say.

I miss the ballads, r58. The Bond themes since the 90s have tried so hard to emulate the Bond/Goldfinger sound that they often become indistinguishable from each other. The best of them - GoldenEye, You Know My Name, Skyfall - had hints of degression, but I keep hoping someone will create a beautiful, melodic, lyrical Bond song like those of the late 70s and early 80s.

Beyonce needs to write and sing a Bond theme.

Best: 1. Goldfinger, 2. Tomorrow Never Dies (K.D. Lang), 3. Thunderball, 4. Nobody Does It Better, 5. You Only Live Twice

Worst: 1. Quantum of Solace, 2. Spectre, 3. Die Another Day, 4. The Man with the Golden Gun, 5. Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow)

[quote]The Bond themes since the 90s have tried so hard to emulate the Bond/Goldfinger sound that they often become indistinguishable from each other.

YES! This is exactly the problem. And songs like "Nobody Does it Better" are classics that don't sound like Bond pastiches, but work perfectly for the movie.

I think older Bond movies don't have Bond song and Bond score separated. Say, John Barry wrote the Bond song and the score, and it felt cohesive, because the song's melody was used in the score. With License To Kill, that tradition ended, but got resurrected by David Arnold in some capacity.

Sorry, ... but got resurrected by David Arnold to some extent.

[Quote] it felt cohesive, because the song's melody was used in the score.

Not Thunderball.

The track "Capsule in Space" from You Only Live Twice, is one of my favourite pieces from a Bond film, ever.

r65, Tom Jones' Thunderball was written by John Barry (and Don Black), though. Just much later (because the original Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang with Shirley Bassey was too short and the Dionne Warwick version was scrapped when the producers decided it would be better for the song and movie to have the same title).

Diamond's Are Forever has fascinating thought provoking lyrics (they have nothing to do with the film but they are really interesting and Dame Shirley delivers them well.)

And then Don Black gave witless lyrics to The Man With the Golden Gun ("Who will he bang? We shall see").

I like the story Carole Bayer Sager tells how Marvin Hamlisch and the producers were so impressed that she managed to work the phrase "the spy who loved me" into a romantic ballad on the first day or so working with them.

[quote]For Your Eyes Only's song is one the greats. Including the production with the underwater sounds and sonar pings at the start

And Miss Sheena Easton belting out the song topless! I saw this in the theater as a tween gay and was positively scandalized!

"Never Say Never Again" (I know, not in the canon) sounded like the theme to an Emmanuelle movie.

really r71? You see the tits or does she cover them.

That would have been scandalous. Sheena was so innocent pre-Prince.

Cilla's version of "Aquarius" sounds like a Bond theme.

She covered them very daintly. But STILL!

Damn. 75 posts and no one likes Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World”? I love it.

[quote] I think older Bond movies don't have Bond song and Bond score separated. Say, John Barry wrote the Bond song and the score, and it felt cohesive, because the song's melody was used in the score. With License To Kill, that tradition ended, but got resurrected by David Arnold in some capacity.

The new Bond movie, scored by Hans Zimmer, uses the theme song in some of its orchestrations and, more noticeably, We Have All the Time in the World throughout.

*daintily*

The best Bond theme is the Bond theme, itself!

They should get Laibach to do the next one.

[quote]sounded like the theme to an Emmanuelle movie.

I was in one of those! Bond Meets Black Emmanuelle!

R72 It's by the great Michel Legrand and quite good and slinky.

I've always liked For Your Eyes Only. Sheena Easton did a lovely job with that song.

Shirley Bassey/Goldfinger owns this thread.

I liked Adele's Skyfall but it wasn't on the Goldfinger level.

I liked You Only Live Twice but hated Nancy Sinatra's voice, it was barely sustainable.

Yes, that song was too good for Nancy. They should have given it to Petula Clark.

[quote] I liked You Only Live Twice but hated Nancy Sinatra's voice, it was barely sustainable

Yes, she sounded comatose. John Barry is the genius behind all these early Bonds.

Barry's score of Pussy Galore's raid on Fort Knox from Goldfinger!

The whole staging of it was so audacious. There was no other film like it at the time.

Gawd, Shirley Bassey is fucking awful. All she does is yell and bray. Granted the Bond songs aren't exactly high art but her voice is like a torture device. North Korean concentration camps probably play her songs on a loop all day and it's probably more effective than ripping out the prisoners' nails.

You type very young r88. Are you perhaps 15?

bille e. sux bad....how she a famous singer/????????

r88 doesn't have the range.

Shirley knows how to belt out the last word of the sentence.

R88 if they're playing anything to drive the prisoner's around the bend, it's tap.

Anyone remember a late vintage Cagney comedy in which he takes his family to Europe and his daughter (Pamela Tiffin) falls in love with an East German (the luscious Horst Buccholz) dedicated Ted? The authorities pick him up to interrogate him because of the affair and lock him on a room playing that song "Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" over and over . . .

^*prisoners (not prisoner's)

^^*rap (not tap)

^^^*dedicated Red (not Ted)

One day I'm going to kill someone over this autocorrect by flinging it across a room or bus or Tube train and hitting someone.

Slightly OT but WHET Horst Buccholz? He was delicious.

Oh I read a long article about him recently, but where? There is plenty of info no the net about him. Such a lovely euro-think.

I love Gladys Knight but Licence to Kill was a lame song.

Horst Buchholz died in 2003.

R93, you're thinking of One, Two, Three (1961), a classic Billy Wilder comedy; Pamela Tiffin plays the daughter of his boss on a tour of Europe.

Phyllis Hyman did a version of "Never Say Never Again" that was rejected.

Poor Phyllis could never catch a break. She deserved so much better.

I think I am a minority, but my favorite Bond theme song is Moonraker performed by Shirley Bassey.

1. You know my name (Casino royale)

2. A view to a kill

3. Nobody does it better (The spy who loved me)

4. GoldenEye

R30: agreed!

Here’s another possible contender

Radiohead's Spectre song was fucking amazing. And that shitty Sam Smith song is what they chose instead?

Sheesh.

Moonraker

R102, I like that one!

I can see why they wouldn't use the Radiohead song for Spectre. The Bond franchise has, from early on, relied on the commerciality of the main themes as a promotional tool for the films. They're released several weeks before the films open to create a buzz and get people talking. The most popular Bond songs stick to your brain and are easy to hum. That is not the Radiohead song. It's a beautiful song alright, but no one is going to be humming it on their way to work. While the Sam Smith song far from one of the best, it is still far more commercial than the Radiohead song and, I think, ultimately does the job better.

One of the things I liked about Craig's first outing, Casino Royale, is that it is a sort of prequel of the young, raw Bond just admitted to the 007 club. It shows how he got the Aston Martin, but for the entire film you don't hear the original snazzy Bond's personal motif theme on the horns until the very last scene [spoiler alert] - when he comes for the guy in on the Vespa fraud whose phone number she left for him, shoots him in the leg, and then as he stands over him and says "The name is Bond: James Bond" you first hear the creeping theme that you will hear in every other appearance of Bond.

It was a wonderful use of music to suggest a sort of reverse foreshadowing. When I saw the film on first release, people in the audience began to cheer and clap when the theme was introduced at the very end.

Very clever.

A medley of all the Bond themes:

"starting with Dr No all the way up to next month's No Time To Die!"

Er, I'm barely started and it's not doing that at all? Started with "Diamonds are Forever", now doing "A View to a Kill"?

Sounding good so far though.

It's out of order, but includes all the songs.

Yes, but it's the way they phrased it that's weird, because it makes it sound chronological.

The cynic in me thinks they mixed them up because the earlier songs are much better with beautiful arrangements. Like how song artist's choose to go non-chronological in their Greatest Hits collections, because they don't want all the good stuff stacked at the beginning.

^like how SOME artists*

I still love the theme from OHMSS. That opening bass just grabs you and pulls you in. Such a 1960s sound but still holds up well today.

"Ten minutes and COUNTING..."

Haha, I always loved how the Austin Powers movies replicated the delivery of that. This music makes me think of that.

I consider John Barry (whose real name was John Prendergast) to be a genius.

I mentioned earlier that the Goldfinger song was 'stolen' from Brecht and Weill.

He also 'stole' orchestration from Rimsky-Korsakov (the second movement between 5.00 and 10.00).

R119 Not as much as John Williams stole from just about everyone in almost every film score he wrote. I heard bits of Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Holst, and Puccini throughout. "Catch Me If You Can" was a out the only exception.

I think Bernstein stole the melody for "A Place for Us" from the opening bars of the slow movement of one of Beethoven's piano concerti, but I can't remember if it was 4 or 5.

It happens. They stand on the shoulders of giants.

.,.,

I like the ominous sounding instrumental opening-theme for “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. This movie has the best Bond soundtrack overal.

Controversial opinion: Never Say Never Again is a more enjoyable movie than Thunderball.

1. You Only Live Twice (the strings are glorious, and the nod to the Japanese setting)

2. Nobody Does It Better

3. GoldenEye

4. From Russia with Love

5. Live and Let Die

6. Moonraker

7. Thunderball

8. Diamonds Are Forever

9. Goldfinger

10. A View To A Kill

I love the Siouxise Sioux and Phyllis Hyman rejects that were posted above, Phyllis had the perfect dramatic, champagne popping voice for a Bond theme. Since we're sharing themes that never happened: Britpop band Pulp were also contracted to write one for Tomorrow Never Dies. I don't think it was ever seriously going to be considered (those distorted guitars, lol). But it's interesting to see all the different directions the producers were targeting.

I also find this song was a big part of Dr. No and that island setting. I saw it on the big screen at a revival a few years ago, and quite a few people were humming this on the way out.

I really like Garbage’s, so it was interesting to find out that the version in the film is a heavily watered down version of what they originally submitted. The Powers That Be apparently gutted the track down to basically guitars, strings and Manson’s vocal and removed all of the Garbage-esque layering. The band saw the film in theaters during an off day from tour and were all gutted when they heard it.

Is Garbage' original out there. I like the song, even if Shirley doesn't quite have the power to sing a Bond tune.

^ Here's the official video

A sweet anecdote from Carly Simon on watching the film's premier:

"Marvin screened the film for us in New York on the evening of July 13—two weeks before the movie opened on July 27.

Only a handful of us were there—Marvin and Carole, James and me, and our friends, drummer Russ Kunkel and his wife Leah, Cass Elliot’s sister, and their son, Nathaniel.

The film began with Bond, played by Roger Moore, skiing down the Alps chased by bad guys with guns. To escape, Bond skied straight off a cliff.

His Union Jack parachute opened and he descended. When the silhouette of a women’s hands came up to cradle him, my theme began. I was breathless.

About five minutes after the end of my theme, the film and score began to slow and then stopped completely. We were in the dark.

A woman with a flashlight arrived and told us there had been a citywide blackout. She led us out.

Since we were on the West Side, we all headed up to my apartment. We lit candles, and I opened the windows.

Everyone stayed overnight. Marvin played the piano and we all sang. I kept getting ice from the deli downstairs. I sang “Nobody Does It Better” any number of ways. James sang, too. He loved the song.

It was wonderful and the only night like it in my life. There we were around the piano during the 1977 blackout. It was a thrill. My blackout just happened to include James Taylor and James Bond."

How odd. She talks about James Taylor like a fan.

R127 I don’t think so

Amazon’s Echo Dot will play every Bond theme, it’s amazing!

R123 - That's not "controversial" - that's just plain bullshit.

Both have very enjoyable performances by Fiona/Fatima, i.e. Luciana Paluzzi and Barbara Carrera. Luciana was one of the first Bond girls who wasn't dubbed, IIRC. Honor Blackman, of course, would never have been dubbed.

Barbara Carrera is a big part of the reason I enjoy Never Say Never Again over Thunderball, though Luciana Paluzzi is good too. But Carrera plays the part perfectly - she's big and almost campy but never tips over the edge. She seems insane, you actually feel Fatima is a very dangerous person. Even people who don't like NSNA rave about her part in it, and say the movie is not the same once she is no longer in it.

Thunderball has too many scenes that drag on for me.

Luciana is better. Barbara is too over the top, even though it's not her fault but the shitty script's that she's forced to recite.

R86 Nancy Sinatra’s voice was perfect for “You Only Live Twice”, because it’s a wistful song. Belters like Tom Jones or Shirley Bassey would’ve ruined it.

Best (any order):

Goldeneye Nobody Does It Better Goldfinger A View To A Kill For Your Eyes Only

Underrated: Licence to Kill You Know My Name The World Is Not Enough

Worst: The Sheryl Crow song is gawdawful The Living Daylights is pretty generic

Petula Clark would have done "You Only Live Twice" so much better than tiny voiced Nancy.

Dusty Springfield also would have done it better.

Nobody does it better.