Best Bond theme songs

[Lys]

So, i was looking at older threads on this page, and something in Havoc complaining about this year's Oscars jumped out at me:

Skyfall was, in my mind, a fairly middling Bond theme from a singer I've never been overfond of.

It's a somewhat strange opinion to me, as Skyfall may very well be my favourite Bond theme ever. i can understand not liking Adele, but Skyfall is both her best song, and unlike most of her other songs, so if there was an Adele song to be the exception, then Skyfall would be it. Anyway, this got me to thinking about what exactly makes a good Bond song, what are the aspects that the ones that feel they fit best have in common?

After giving the matter some thought, here are the things that in my mind make a good Bond song, in rough order of importance: 1) It must be a good song (duh), that is 2) sung by a woman, 3) about love or heartbreak, and 4) passionate and deliberate in pacing. That's my mental picture of the structure of a "good Bond song".

Thus my favourite bond songs are Skyfall, The World is Not Enough, and Tomorrow Never Dies. Honourable mention to Snake Eater, which isn't a Bond song but is an excellently done tribute that succeeds on the merits. Clearly Hideo Kojima gets it. Other Bond songs i like include: Die Another Day, Goldeneye, Diamonds Are Forever, and Licence to Kill. Sadly, while On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a great song waiting to happen, nobody put lyrics to it.

A lot of people might be upset that A View to a Kill and You Know My Name do not qualify as good Bond songs by my standards, as they fail on 3/4 points. Far as A View to a Kill goes, i like Duran Duran, and that's one of their best songs, but i have no problem saying that it's a good song that is not a good Bond song. Same deal for The Living Daylights, great song, not a great Bond song. You Know My Name presents a bit of a bigger problem in that it fits Bond despite being nominally unsuited, so i hesitate to put it into the "good but not good for Bond" category. If there was to be one exception to the rules, then You Know My Name would have to be it.

So, thoughts, opinions?

[General Havoc]

Well since it's my quote you're dredging up, I'll just say that Skyfall fails for me as a song. The damn thing is just boring, slow and droning, uninteresting to me. I do not, for the life of me, understand why it received so much praise. The movie overall was excellent, but as Bond themes go (and frankly, I don't like the majority of them), it just fell flat to me. I didn't hate it, but I certainly would not have called it the best of the year.

In terms of Bond themes I do like, the vast majority (Skyfall included) are instantly forgettable. Two that did manage to stick out in my mind are the themes to For Your Eyes Only (which is a bad song, but one I like), and Goldeneye (which to my mind is a Skyfall style song done right). I just don't really remember many others (License to Kill isn't bad, on reflection).

Oh and regarding Adele? I don't think Skyfall is either her best song or all that different from her usual oeuvre. I think her best song is Someone Like You, and Skyfall reminds me strongly of a much slower and more downbeat Rolling in the Deep. Neither are favorites of mine.

[Lys]

This is amusing, if i were to call any Adele song boring and droning it would be... Someone Like You, which to me is more similar to Rolling In the Deep than Skyfall is. Goldeneye, as mentioned, is a song i like, but i hesitate to call it Skyfall done... anything really. There don't seem to be any similarities in musical construction except in the very broadest terms, and the comparison honestly baffles me.

As for why Skyfall itself is interesting, well it's hard to describe why most songs are interesting. In this particular case, either the music and singing sound harmonious to you, or they don't i guess. The song does have something of a deliberate pace stretched over a length of 4 min 30 secs so you have to like the music because you'll be hearing a lot of it. It's not what i would call slow, though. An actual slow song would be The Shooting Company of Captain Frans B. Cocq by Ayreon, which clocks at 8 minutes and yet has less half the lines that Skyfall does. i imagine it would bore you to tears, but it's one of my favourite songs. In fact, i like Skyfall and The Shooting Company so much that i've put them into InfiniteLooper and listened for hours. Pretty sure one time i played Shooting Company for 20 hours or so, though i was asleep for half of them.

Bond songs in general are to my liking, as my post surely illustrates. i can't tell you how many exactly i don't like, because music not to my taste simply doesn't stick in my mind, but i think it's not many of them. At worst they're either not noteworthy or else poor thematic fits for James Bond (like Living Daylights and View to a Kill). Could be that to the extent Bond songs have any thematic unity, it's not really to your liking Havoc, but is very much to mine. For Your Eyes Only falls into the category of okay but unremarkable Bond song. It's not bad, stands up to repeat listens, and meets the standards, but it's not worth writing home about either.

[Josh]

A View to a Kill was an interesting experiment of a movie. Much like Moonraker, it was an attempt to keep Bond modern and contemporary while struggling with the fact that they were in dire need of transition to a new lead actor. Having Duran Duran do the theme was part of that modernization effort.

It's my favorite precisely because it is distinctive. Most of the Bond themes are fairly forgettable- the only ones that I can conjure in my mind are Live and Let Die, Diamonds are Forever, and Your Eyes Only. The Dalton/Brosnan/Craig eras all sort of blur together. I know Tina Turner did Goldeneye, but for the life of me I can't conjure the tune or the lyrics.

[LadyTevar]

I would say that the worse songs are Man with the Golden Gun and Thunderball. (Sorry Dad, I know you loved it)

[Josh]

Goldfinger sticks out. Can't believe I forgot that one.

The Man with the Golden Gun should've been so awesome, and was so not.

[Lys]

A View to a Kill was an interesting experiment of a movie. Much like Moonraker, it was an attempt to keep Bond modern and contemporary while struggling with the fact that they were in dire need of transition to a new lead actor. Having Duran Duran do the theme was part of that modernization effort.

James Bond is to me two different genres. You have campy Bond, who is full of silly and is basically Secret Agent Man doing Secret Agent Things in a ridiculous and over the top fashion. Of those, Moonraker is my favourite; i watched A View to a Kill but can't remember any of it other than there was this hot amazonesque woman named Mayday. Then you have the serious Bond films that are closer to the Ian Flemming novels, where things are darker and more dangerous, and the silliness if present is de-emphasized. Of those my favourite is License to Kill, because it's a visceral and brutal film about an agent going rogue to get simple revenge, and the bad guys aren't some sort of world-spanning evil organization bent on world domination, but simply a gang of drug runners. It does everything Quantum of Solace tried to do and it does it much better, though Quantum isn't bad just crippled by circumstance.

[Josh]

License to Kill is another odd one, because it sort of straddled the line. Dalton was coming off the high camp of the Moore era and they were definitely moving back toward the grittier depictions of Bond, but they couldn't quite get away with going full-on Bourne the way the Craig movies did. Dalton's problem wasn't that he was bad at it, it was that the audience had been primed by over a decade of Moore movies to expect 'High Spy' drama and not something with more edge.

Then you still had the ridiculous contrivances of the older era, such as the villain's ridiculously elaborate escape plan when he was taken into custody. They would've done better to commit all the way to one style or another.

QoS is just sad, because it could've been so much more. Talk about a gigantic missed opportunity there.

[Lys]

License to Kill was Dalton's second film, his first was The Living Daylights which had also taken a more serious route than the usual superspy vs supergenius fare. It's actually a pretty straightforward story involving normal spy stuff like defections, embezzlement, arms deals, and drug shipments. Still haven't watched it though, which is a shame because i like Dalton's bond. Honestly both of them are pretty serious to me, they're not full out Bourne, but until Casino Royale no Bond film was, they always had something of a fun element to them.

The ones that are a good example of straddlingly the line between serious and campy are the Brosnan films. All four of them seemed to try and go in both directions and once, and only Goldeneye managed to pull it off. It was like, after Goldeneye they made the films darker and grittier, but didn't adjust the plots, the gadgets, or the action to compensate, so you get the tone of a serious Bond movie with the plot silliness and other accoutrements of campy Bond movie, and it just fell apart at the seams. The only one that seemed salvageable was The World is Not Enough and that's entirely because Sophie Marceau playes a great femme fatale. The rest of the movie consists of a total emo loser, a wasted chance to let Judi Dench shine, and a plot riddled with stupid. And what did they follow it up with? Another emo loser this time with metal acne, an awkward mix of serious business torture with invisible cars and laser fist fights, the Goldeneye back as as sunbeamlaser, and yet more plot stupid. Seriously, Die Another Day is like they said, "Hey Goldeye was a good, everyone liked it, why don't we just do Goldeneye again?"

[Josh]

I liked The Living Daylights a bit better than its sequel, myself. What sticks out these days is that this is when the mujahideen were our noble allies against the evils of communism in a lot of movies. (And are handled in it about as well as they are in Rambo 3.)

Brosnan has this ridiculous-looking mincing run that once you see it, you'll never be able to unsee it. He had potential, but they pissed it away with stale plots.

Die Another Day should have been great- it starts off perfectly with a fresh story concept, follows it for a while, then veers into stupidity. I will admit that I did enjoy the cheesy supercar vs. supercar fight, though.

Thankfully they never bothered with the Halle Berry spin-off, because that would've been pretty damned ridiculous. It is funny as hell that she had the choice between that and Catwoman and took the latter, though.

Brosnan adjusting his tie while driving the tank in Goldeneye has to go down as one of the all-time Bond moments. Bonus points for cars exploding for no good reason and the bit with the statue.

[Lys]

The entire Moscow tank chase is one of the all time best Bond-moments. Pierce Brosnan is a decent actor and he made a very good suave Bond who was still able to have moments of pathos. The fight with Alec Travelyan at the end of Goldeneye was pretty damn satisfying both because the movie had done a great job building up the tension between the two, and because Brosnan had a knack for knowing just when to drop the suaveness and get down to serious business, leading up to another of the all time Bond moments: "For England James?" "No, for me." *kicks Alec off the cradle*

As you say, the arc of the Brosnan movies had potential that was thrown away with mediocre scripts. Agree that Die Another Day could have been much better, but the hotel scene with the fake masseuse is pretty much the last time the movie acknowledges that Bond was stuck in a North Korean military prison for a while. After that the plot thread is pretty much dropped and forgotten, because that would get in the way of a stale rehash of prior Brosnan films, hence my comment that it felt like they decided to just do Goldeneye again. Still, it's the potential for The World is Not Enough that really disappoints me. The Bond girl turning out to be in league with the bad guy and Bond shooting her was unprecedented, and Brosnan had good chemistry with Marceau. The scene where he cold bloodedly executes her, and then just takes a moment to caress her corpse tenderly, that was well done and showed character depth, but the rest of the films just drowns out the good parts.