ROLLING STONE has listed the 26 most important James Bond songs from 1963. The ranking:
26. Madonna: “Die Another Day”
Good Bond songs thrive on the balance between orchestra and pop. However, Madonna prevailed over the film producers and recorded a purely electronic piece with her producer Mirwais. It sounds either like suburban disco or singing in the bellows.
25. Alicia Keys and Jack White: “Another Way To Die”
A “die” in the title doesn’t make a good Bond song. Jack White’s voice is indistinguishable from Keys’. Drums and guitar too loud. We know – from the White Stripes.
24. Sheryl Crow: “Tomorrow Never Dies”
The most unfortunate case, if only the third worst song. An actually independent singer is no longer recognizable here, but becomes the Bond mascot. Drama without soul and mind.
23. Garbage: “The World Is Not Enough”
If you don’t know the song but have to imagine what a piece would sound like whose chorus consists of a brutally stretched out “The World Is Not Enough” – you would come up with exactly this melody by Garbage. James Bond from the typesetting kit. Struggled with it for a long time while writing, actually one should refrain from the play on words, too stupid, never mind, out with it: “The band name says it all”.
22. Sam Smith: “Writings On The Wall”
Don’t judge a song by a boring title. The orchestral fill-ins, however, are as uninspired as Garbage or Adele’s “Skyfall.” Smith’s shift to higher pitches doesn’t jibe with our images of Bond. Four minutes waiting for a good chorus that doesn’t come.
21. Chris Cornell: “You Know My Name”
In itself a good idea. Inaugural visit by Daniel Craig with “Casino Royale”, flanked by the “big guy” Chris Cornell. The song itself is uninteresting, but one of the better tracks Cornell has released outside of Soundgarden.
20. Tina Turner: “Goldeneye”
Composed by Bono and The Edge, the song shares the same misconception as Platz…
… 19. Adele: “Skyfall”
It’s just not enough to throw together a “lady” with “orchestra” and “a Bond preset hook” and then it’s all right. The drama is completely pointless. The attempt to go back to old times with Adele 2012, “to rely on great soul singers”, has failed. The best Bond songs are NOT reminiscent of John Barry’s famous Bond instrumental.
18. Sheena Easton: “For Your Eyes Only”
In 1981, Bill Conti owed the first really bad Bond song. What Sheena Easton is singing sounds like an outtake from the “Cats” musical.
17. Billie Eilish – “No Time To Die”
“You’ll Never See Me Cry / There’s Just No Time To Die” – It would have been interesting to have been able to play mouse during the production of the song. Which requirements did Eilish have to meet, which sounds to integrate, what did the producers ask for? The orchestra sounds a little like Pre-Set, the old school 007 tune, but luckily Eilish’s intimate singing takes center stage. The final chord pays homage to Barry’s “007” theme; Hans Zimmer, co-composer, may have been heard here. Guitarist Johnny Marr, also involved, unfortunately not.
16. Gladys Knight: “License To Kill”
The old “orchestra plus soul singer” formula doesn’t work as well as it does with Shirley Bassey, but bassey, uh, better than Tina Turner, who sings almost the same song with “Goldeneye” six years later. Gladys Knight has a reputation, but only halfway hipper musicians would be hired after her.
15. Lulu: “The Man With The Golden Gun”
The only not really successful James Bond song by John Barry. The song is too hectic. Trumpet fanfares are meant to create suspense (a bit ridiculous), Lulu sings – Freud ad nauseam – of men and their “powerful weapons”. Regardless of the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, those responsible were completely beside themselves. Musical cardboard.
14. Rita Coolidge: “All Time High”
For “Octopussy” from 1983, John Barry composed a hit for the first time, you think you can hear a cocktail glass clinking everywhere. “All Time High” – whenever James is around. It was the time when women were still considered weaker. Apart from that: the first decent song in this list. He hardly sounds like 007!
13. Lani Hall: “Never Say Never Again”
Perhaps one would have credited the composer Michel Legrand with something more complex. But this Bacardi jazz, sung by Lani Hall (singer of Sergio Mendes’ “Mais Que Nada”) about Sean Connery’s thoughts on his retirement from Bond, builds an underlying tension.
12. Tom Jones: “Thunderball”
“He Always Runs, While Others Walk / He Acts, While Other Men Just Talk” – the first and only Bond song to date in which the interpreter himself sounds as tough as the double agent himself. As if Bond were singing here personally , while approaching his victim.
11. Matt Monro: “From Russia With Love”
The Bond song, which was already old-fashioned even in its time, 1963, relies on Matt Monro’s crooner effect. A gentleman who prefers romance to action. The film songs shouldn’t sound so dreamy for a long time after that.
10. Shirley Bassey: “Diamonds Are Forever”
The perfect balance of love (to diamonds, who are truer to you than men) and call-to-action (accomplish a mission) is perfectly reflected in the song’s tempo changes. Title track from John Barry’s probably best Bond score and Bassey’s second agent assignment after “Goldfinger”. Alone, the success could not be repeated.
09. Radiohead: “Spectre”
Who can look inside the minds of the Bond producers? Instead of this song they chose Sam Smith’s “Writings On The Wall”. Radiohead were turned down, initially with the perfectly fitting “Man Of War” on the grounds that pre-existing songs weren’t allowed (this was an outtake of the “OK Computer” sessions). So they sat down again for “Spectre”. With Thom Yorke and colleagues, the Bond team could have hooked up with the most important rock great since Paul McCartney’s 1973 “Live and Let Die”. Missed the chance.
08. Shirley Bassey: “Moonraker”
Shirley Bassey’s third entry for Bond works less with her otherwise demonstratively emphasized voice than with the thought that the performer in the song might be a dying woman. The song sounds all the more like a longing for life.
07. A-ha: “The Living Daylights”
John Barry’s final Bond work – following the argument with A-ha over the song’s arrangement – is a masterpiece of mixing. The orchestra fires at just the right moments; the pop band counters this with a predominantly acoustic guise. The last great Bond song, released in 1987.
06. Shirley Bassey: “Goldfinger”
The actual hour of birth of the masculine Bond song – after the rather reservedly romantic Matt Monro a year earlier. The funny disparity here is that Bassey sings so sexy about Goldfinger, the “Man with the Midas touch”, that one can hardly imagine that Gert Fröbe is hiding behind it.
05. Carly Simon: “Nobody Does It Better”
Marvin Hamlisch composed this beautiful lounge pop, in which only the gender image is a bit baroque: the men run the place, the women adore them.
04. Nancy Sinatra: “You Only Live Twice”
If songs were animals, this one would be a peacock. John Barry wrote the tune under the influence of Exotica Les Baxters, his western idea of Asia Pacific music. He used it again for the title motif of “Midnight Cowboy”.
03. Paul McCartney & Wings: “Live and Let Die”
Rock, reggae and a little “Let It Be”: Three years after the Beatles broke up, McCartney and producer George Martin proved how action and heart can share a song together. A completely new type of blockbuster song, whose sudden aggressiveness also Guns N’Roses knew how to use in their cover version.
02. Duran Duran: “A View To A Kill”
The band took care of the thunderous drums, as if taken from a Collins/Padgham production, and the meandering bass line, the staccato strings John Barry. Amazingly, the only Bond song to date that actually sounds like the agent is in danger.
01. Louis Armstrong: “We Have All The Time In The World”
Armstrong’s final vocal recording did not function as the theme song, but ran through “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” as a continuous love theme. 007 is getting married, and this song cements Bond’s new approach to life: Nothing is more important than private life.