September 25, 2015
"After 53 years and 23 official themes, it is not easy to create a Bond song without venturing into musical pastiche..."
"... but you would have to say they Smith has pulled it off with aplomb.... It is another attempt to give 007 an emotional inner life he rarely betrays on screen. This is a Bond who just wants to be loved. But Smith has to wrap those extraordinary vocal chords around something...."
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37 comments:
For Your Eyes Only had the best theme song.
Would Sam Smith be such a big star if he wasn't such a flaming gay stereotype? He's a singer with almost no range. There are a dozen better British soul singers and a dozen better pop singers around the world. I don't get it. Actually, I do get it. The selling of homosexuality as fashion.
FWIW, it seems to fail the Roger Ebert test for a theme song. I didn't hear a hook and unlike several other Bond themes, nothing stuck from the first listen, I've already forgotten what it sounded like. I also didn't hear anything that made me think it had anything to do with Bond.
A somewhat clever stylistic mashup, but a pretty weak song. Want to hear a Bondish song done well? Black Valentine by Caro Emerald.
I was hoping this was going to be the new Bond theme song. A little disappointed. They already did soulful with Adele and Skyfall, which I liked. Sam Smith ain't no Adele.
Fortunately it doesn't play on my computer. Youtube versions are short and unremarkable.
I'd have picked something by Faure, say Clair de lune.
For Your Eyes Only is possibly the worst song ever written, musically. I expect something of that kind from the franchise. Now they've gone to bad plots to match.
Drax playing Chopin in Moonraker was the high point of Bond.
It is another attempt to give 007 an emotional inner life he rarely betrays on screen.
Hm. Is deep, haunted Bond an improvement over superficial, slutty Bond?
The deep, haunted Bond is for women. Ratings.
Men are more into fun.
I can't remember the last time that a theme song has destroyed any interest I might have in seeing a movie.
The choice of such an extraordinarily insipid song suggests that the people in charge of the film have lost the plot, and the linked article's over-the-top praise for such a mawkish bit of music is the kind of "telling me how to feel" that almost always leaves me feeling contemptuous of the source.
I was young enough that I didn't realize that "Nobody Does it Better" was about a woman conflicted over her desperate craving for a dependably masterful penis.
I just thought it was a shitty song.
Now that I'm older I can dislike it on a whole new level.
There's some kind of magic inside you
That keeps me from runnin'
But just keep it comin'
Now THAT'S what I call classy!!!
Vocal chords? Really?
Can't they get Bitter•Sweet to do one? Half the stuff they do would work.
@campy, no.
Goldfinger.
My son gave up on the Bond series when the villains went from plotting to destroy the earth in nuclear conflagration to selling bottled water.
I think I raised the kid right.
"But Smith has to wrap those extraordinary vocal chords (sic) around something...."
Like Elton John's dick.
The deep, haunted Bond is for women.
I don't know. I think it's a product of the age. Women liked romping, carefree Bond.
Making him dark and brooding makes him into an entirely different character. Where is the witty, charming, handsome, luxuriating, round-heeled Bond? Where's Bond the libertine? He was funny. You wouldn't like him in real life, but so what? He was great as a pretend guy on a screen.
Of course, I suppose there's a cultural downside since so many people took the character as aspirational.
But still, old Bond was funny. New Bond is sad.
In Skyfall, we were taken to James Bond's.... parents' house? What?
Of course, I suppose there's a cultural downside since so many people took the character as aspirational
That is the problem with all fiction! It's a shame we don't have a place we could all go, maybe once a week, Sunday might be nice, where we could get reset to some kind of time-tested cultural norms....
Leave Bond alone!
Too much ghey and interior development, such are the times.
I don't want the complexity of the books, either, I just want new gadgets, the finest woman on the planet, shady go-betweens and even absurd villains running through modernist lairs.
Total escapism for me.
In Skyfall, we were taken to James Bond's.... parents' house? What?
Didn't it seem like the last Act was taken from Home Alone?
The best Bond movie made in the last ten years was Cars II.
The best song in a James Bond movie is Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World". But it's far from being the best James Bond theme song.
tim in vermont said...
It's a shame we don't have a place we could all go, maybe once a week, Sunday might be nice, where we could get reset to some kind of time-tested cultural norms....
That's all well and good, but eventually football season comes to an end. Then what do we do?
I've always wondered about the uniformed, service employees of Bond villains. They were absolutely fearless and never questioned orders. What was the recruitment process? What were the job performance bonuses? I think our military forces can learn something from them...... Not VW, though. There was no Edward Snowden at VW. The CEO even had a Bond villain accent. You can't go wrong if you invest in companies run by Bond villains. VW stock, IMHO, is currently undervalued. If they can bounce back from slave labor, they can bounce back from this piddling scandal.
A Bond who just wants to be loved...
...oh, dear...
Better go break out my "Flint" DVD's...
...or maybe "Matt Helm." The Dino version...
William...Hey Evil, Inc. in "Austin Powers" owned Starbucks.
Its cheating maybe, but the best Bond song was in the 1967 Casino Royale -- Burt Bacharach and Tijuana Brass (there is singing in the closing credits so I think it counts as a song). People always forget about that one!
The second best Bond song - from the same movie -- was Look Of Love - Dusty Springfield (also written by Burt Bacharach, in part). It was nominated for an Academy Award (but lost to Talk to the Animals from Doctor Doolittle).
IiB FTW!
Castrati crap.
I don't want Bond to want to be loved. I want him to kick ass, suavely.
Didn't it seem like the last Act was taken from Home Alone?
Yes!
I heard NPR's interview of this singer about this song. I was mystified as to why NPR was interested in a Bond movie theme. Now I know. They promote all things homosexual.
You can SAY it isn't a pastiche, but it IS a pastiche, as generic as the name "Sam Smith", and it's garbage by a talentless falsetto warbler who rips off the likes of Tom Petty. This was a horrible choice for a Bond theme, and Smith was a horrible choice to sing it. I was almost tempted to give Bond another chance, having missed the last couple of outings, but I'll probably give this one a pass.
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