An Auditory Look at Bond

(Editor's note: While this was originally posted on Nov. 23, 2008, on my MySpace page, I have updated it on Dec. 1, 2012, to include the newest Bond movie, Skyfall. This is only to the list and not the prose at this time. One day I'll get around to editing the rest. Enjoy!)

So, I went and saw Quantum of Solace last night. If you've been living under a rock or in a cave for the last 5 years, EON has told us that these last two Bond movies (Casino Royale came out in 2006) starring Daniel Craig, are not prequels, but a "retelling" of the 007 franchise Ian Fleming so lovingly wrote 40 years ago, and Albert Broccoli so carefully produced for 30 years. I went in with such low expectations that I was just pleasantly surprised that 007 wasn't given amnesia and forced to retrace his steps to figure out who did it to him and take them down (a la the Bourne trilogy, which looks like they're trying to do after the utterly-boring Casino).

However, I'm not writing my review on this movie; as my friend Kevin will tell you, I'm "an idiot with movies". That being said, if you want a movie review, go see his blog. I'm writing today, not about the James Bond we see, but the one we hear. Every Bond movie has some good core elements (something the masterminds of this "retooling" have seem to forgotten...mostly): a suave, cool, and collected protagonist (aka 007); a cliched, yet campy and well-loved, saying or two (quick fact: did you know that martinis are really never shaken? If you did that, it becomes a watered-down mess. Basically, James was a lightweight with his alcohol and tried to hide it!); a Bond girl with a borderline R-rated name (Plenty O'Toole was pretty tame, though); and a really cool theme song for the time frame in which the film was set.

And that last one is the subject of this post today. There have been 23 Bond films to date, and 22 original songs (Dr. No was the only one to use the official Bond theme song as its movie song as well), so I think it's time to do a "Best of..." list. I'm sure there's some out there much more well-known (and better written) than mine, but fuck it! You're here, so might as well do it. Keep in mind, I'm not rating the movies, or even how the opening sequences were filmed; I'm only gonna rate the song itself. So, without further ado:

11.) "Moonraker" - Dame Shirley Bassey (from Moonraker)




Before you quit on this list already, remember what I said: I'm not judging the movies; that's Kevin's job. Mine is to judge the songs, and as far as the theme songs go, this one just beat out Quantum of Solace's "Another Way to Die" for this spot. With the vocals of Bassey, and the down-tempo sensation of floating through space, it fit into the theme of the movie precisely...even if the movie was pretty cheesy. (Another quick fact: Dame Bassey is the only person to sing the theme for more than one Bond film. One more is on my Top 10, but the one that missed the cut was "Goldfinger" for - you guessed it - Goldfinger)

10.) "A View to a Kill" - Duran Duran (from A View to a Kill)




EON has (almost) always chosen acts to do their themes that were super-popular at the time. You had Tom Jones in '65, Lulu in '74, Sheena Easton in '81, and Madonna in '02, so why should 1985 be any different. Duran Duran just came off their multi-platinum album Rio a few years earlier, and were still riding high. And this theme sounded like something that came off that album: lots of synth, big vocals, and a funky bass line make this the epitome of the '80s pop-rock scene.

9.) "Tomorrow Never Dies" - Sheryl Crow (from Tomorrow Never Dies)




Being a folksy rocker chick would usually exclude you from being picked for being the "artist-of-record" for a moment in time, yet she somehow pulls it off well; she doesn't let the big orchestra drown her out and makes sure you hear her loud and clear, yet doesn't strain to make it known. From the catchy hook, to the bluesy beat, this song works.

8.) "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" - John Barry (from On Her Majesty's Secret Service)




George Lazenby's only role was under-appreciated. Maybe that was because it was less action and more love story, or because Blomfeld's actor changed, showing the first flaw with the series. Possibly moreso, it's not well-received because Lazenby chose to leave after this one movie, thereby adding to the psyche that he believed his own performance was bad, so why should they like it; this, of course, was not the case. But in forgoing this movie, you miss a dark and sinister opening theme that fits perfectly into the sentiment of this film. (Now, I'll probably receive the most criticism from this one because some will argue "this wasn't the official theme of that movie." And, actually, they would be right. The official theme song was Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World", which was a fantastic song and could be higher on the list. However, this song was played at the end, during the ending credits, and as that's completely out of character with a Bond theme, it won't be counted on this list.)

7.) "You Know My Name" - Chris Cornell (from Casino Royale)




With the "retooling", Bond was meant to be edgier, grittier, and more of a bad-ass and less refined; Chris Cornell fits this criteria perfectly. From Audioslave and Soundgarden fame, Cornell has always been one of my favorite rock singers, and he proves why here. With mainstream lyrics (the title's not forced into the lyrics) and a killer guitar riff, this song can be played on hard rock stations and no one would think twice and crank it up. Yet, it retains the big orchestra and larger-than-life sound needed for a good Bond theme.

6.) "Nobody Does It Better" - Carly Simon (from The Spy Who Loved Me)




Carly Simon has always been an intriguing singer. People still ask her to this day who "You're So Vain" is about (to which she doesn't reply), and it has been used in dozens of movies and sampled by Janet Jackson. Same goes with "Nobody", even though most people don't remember it's from a 007 film anymore. Turn on any soft-pop station in the country, and you can be assured this song is in their rotation. It has stood the test of time because it's not directly about Bond or the movie (though "the spy who loved me" is forced into the song rather awkwardly), and has the same elements of her other music: slightly funky, slightly folky, and plenty of piano. Any song with this much staying power in the mainstream is good in my book.

5.) "Skyfall" - Adele (from Skyfall)




From another Daniel Craig movie, and the third in his repertoire, this theme song, sung by the incomparable Adele, helps bring the Bond franchise back to its blues/jazz routes. It remains a cool, contemporary sound while conjuring up memories of Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, and Tina Turner. Adele finds a way to make her voice known without overpowering the band, and they work together to create this masterpiece.

4.) "Diamonds Are Forever" - Dame Shirley Bassey (from Diamonds Are Forever)




They say the ultimate compliment is to be ripped off, and that's especially true when it's someone as famous as Kanye West. Some people shrug it off, while most others sue. Dame Bassey was not only was flattered, but she even offered the "usurper" more of her library. This is such a big song, and she's such a big voice, that it's easy to see why West would do such a thing for his song "Diamonds from Sierra Leone". Her powerful pipes constantly fight for control of the song from the orchestra, and it's a beautiful grudge match. Funky, jazzy, and loud, this song is sweet intoxication.

3.) The World Is Not Enough - Garbage (from The World Is Not Enough)




How does a rock band from Wisconsin become one of the biggest bands in the world then become a relic of the Grunge Age, only to come back and perform the Bond theme, which is inherently neither grunge nor rock? That's Garbage, the epitome of the Bond franchise; an evolutionary band pretty much capable of staying relevent in an ever-changing world. I firmly believe Shirley Manson wouldn't be on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles if it wasn't for this glorious comeback. If you close your eyes and listen to the theme, (as their music video suggests) it feels like your watching a massive Broadway musical; there's enough brass and string instruments to rival the Met, and it's completely over-the-top...just the way any good Bond movie should be.

2.) "GoldenEye" - Tina Turner (from GoldenEye)




Who ever thought that Tina Turner was still relevant enough to be the Bond singer in 1995, 6 years after her last studio album, Foreign Affair, was a sheer genius. She has the look (though you don't see her in the film - another quick fact: Sheena Easton and Madonna are the only two singers in their respective films - Easton seen singing in the opening credits of For Your Eyes Only and Madonna having a cameo in Die Another Day) and the sultry voice to pull it off, and that - like Garbage's 1999 appearance - re-sparked her career at a time when the world thought she was done. You can see how I rated this and every other title sequence here, and I suggest you do. With the funky, sexy, and big song attached, this is very much a shining example of a Bond song.

1.) "Live and Let Die" - Wings (from Live and Let Die)




Can you name any other Bond song so relevant, so fresh, and so remade after 35 years? Large crescendos, sing-along lyrics ("You know you did, you know you did, you know you did"), a great riff, and a former Beatle - what more can you ask for? This takes the typical Bond orchestra, gives it a shot of adrenaline, puts tons of pyrotechnics in the room and ignites them, and still has time to have a Monty Python moment ("and now, for something completely different") by creating a catchy hook with a completely different tempo - in case you're about to make a fool of yourself and bust into air guitar. This song makes every other Bond theme seem like they were created to put insomniacs to bed; it's in-your-face and unapologetic. While the movie was good, though not great, the theme was, by far, the best ever created for a Bond. Listen to your classic rock station; I bet you hear this version in the rotation once in a while. (But don't talk to me about the Guns N' Roses version, that was garbage! Hey, I never said the covers were any good.) The chances of anyone making one to dethrone this theme have gone up with the "grittier", "edgier" Bond, and while I love both The White Stripes and Alicia Keys, EON really needs to try harder to find someone who can do it.

So, there you have it. For shiggles, I'll leave you with the rest of the list; consider them my "honorable mentions" as they were good in their own rights, just not the pinnacle of the franchise:

12. "Another Way to Die" - Jack White and Alicia Keys (from Quantum of Solace)
13. "From Russia With Love" - John Barry (from From Russia With Love)
14. "The Living Daylights" - a-ha (from The Living Daylights)
15. "All Time High" - Rita Coolidge (from Octopussy)
16. "Licence to Kill" - Gladys Knight (from Licence to Kill)
17. "The Man with the Golden Gun" - Lulu (from The Man with the Golden Gun)
18. "Die Another Day" - Madonna (from Die Another Day)
19. "Thunderball" - Sir Tom Jones (from Thunderball)
20. "Goldfinger" - Dame Shirley Bassey (from Goldfinger)
21. "You Only Live Twice" - Nancy Sinatra (from You Only Live Twice)
22. "For Your Eyes Only" - Sheena Easton (from For Your Eyes Only)

The (Slow Spinning) Return of the King

So, it was brought to my attention that I was a bit of a dork. I'm obsessed with music and music history in what some people (*coughkevincough*....excuse me, something in my throat) consider an "unhealthy obsession". Sure, do I love experiencing music for all its richness? Yeah. Do I enjoy many different genres and appreciate the ones I'm not as fond of? Absolutely. Do I think something is missing from music today, not in its performance, but in its presentation? Yeah, but I couldn't figure it out until recently.

Apparently, though, I'm not the only one like that. Something I never thought I'd say again in my lifetime, but I'm more than ecstatic to shout it from the rooftops: LP (or for the younger generation - oh...my...God, I sound old as fuck! - vinyl records) sales, both units and dollars, have increased more than 120% from 2007 to 2008. This in an industry that has seen a contraction of about 25% year-to-year on its overall physical media (CDs, cassettes, music videos). While those promising numbers are nowhere near the figures posted by the virtual world (1.11 billion digital units to a measly 2.9 million LPs), this does represent a subtle change in how people want to hear the music, not just listen to it.

Let's go back to the beginning for just a moment. Thomas Alva Edison invented a bagillion things; everything from today's X-ray machine you find at your doctor's office to the stock ticker is thanks to him (and contrary to popular opinion, he didn't create the light bulb; he perfected it and made it long lasting so it could be mass-produced for consumption), as well as the "kinetoscope" (the precursor to the movie theater), the carbon telephone transmitter (the part you spoke into on corded phones...do people still have those?), and the electric generation plant.

However, one of his greatest inventions came about accidentally. He was looking for a way to record telegraphs so they could be "read" automatically and transmitted by telephone to the recipient - that an ingenious idea in and of itself - when he found a way to record and play back sounds instead of dashes and dots. There were other contraptions before his, but none were practical. His "graphophone" was born, consisting of a grooved tin-foil cylinder and a stylus. This later evolved, by other forward-thinking people, into the "phonograph", and for much of the 20th Century, it was the only way - other than live - most people would get their auditory pleasure. Whether it be in the form first depicted by RCA with Nipper listening intently to his master's voice (real dog, BTW) or the turntables attached to amps and equalizers of the '60s, the record, for intents and purposes, was king.

We became a car-crazed culture in the '50s and '60s with the new-found fortunes we had gained at the end of World War II, the advent of the Interstate Highway System, and Jack Kerouac's beatnik manifesto On the Road. We wanted to experience the wind in our hair, the sights not attainable on the old rural roads, and the unbridled feeling of being free - all while listening to our music. Sure, we had radios in our cars, but there were plenty of parts in this vast nation that simply didn't have the population to merit such expenditures like a radio station for people who would most likely never pay for their programming. Also, people wanted to create their own soundtrack, not one given to them across the airwaves. So, we tried everything we could to attach our beloved record players into our newly-beloved cars. When they managed to succeed, they failed. The major flaw with records: they skip sections of music when the stylus, which is on the record by pure gravity, loses contact with the vinyl.

Thus begins the dethroning of King Vinyl. Sure, it was slow and, as is always the case in situations where something as iconic as an LP loses practicality, not without backlash. The first practical attempt to make music portable came on the scene in 1964 with the 8-track. This was a popular medium for about 10 years, when the compact cassette - even though first developed before the 8-track in 1963 - burst onto the scene and chipped away at even the venerable LP.


By the mid '80s, the new kid - and new king, having overtaken LPs as the preferred medium of music for the first time since the days of Edison - on the block was now in danger of itself being overthrown by the threat called the compact disc. The CD was the ultimate in portability: high-quality digital sound, thinner size, and - for the first time - one-button pushing to jump from one song to the next. No more pushing fast forward and hitting play to see where you are if you reallllllllly need to listen to that certain song. The CD easily became champ in the early '90s, and stayed that way until the music industry found a way to eliminate the physical medium altogether: the MP3.

As I type this post, I'm listening to my iTunes right now (Yesterday by The Beatles just came on, and London Bridge by Fergie was just on, and All Your Reasons by Matchbox Twenty before that, in case you were curious), so I'm just as guilty as the next guy of buying into the digital media hype. In fact, digital music sales surpassed physical media two years ago for the first time and it continues to explode. The reasons are justified: iPods and other players are cheaper and more prevalent than just 5 years ago, instant gratification of having "that song", and no longer are you chained to buy the whole album - or pay the insane price for CD singles - if you only like one song. However, with all digital media, something magical is lost.

That something is the sound quality and the fidelity. Where the MP3 - and even, to a lesser extent, the CD and cassette - lacks is a process to make the music readable called "compression". It's not an evil plot by the music industry to sabotage the consumer, but in order for you to hear it with any clarity, some of the fidelity is lost. Instruments and sounds are lost in the translation, and it can cause the song to not be heard as it was intended. It's the biggest limitation with the digital format, and the reason vinyl did not, as predicted, die.

This phenomenon proves that LPs are still a viable media. For their clarity and richness, LPs are here to stay, even as a niche. However, all three (excluding the nearly-departed cassette) mediums are, despite their outward appearance of competition, complimentary to each other as all of them serve a specific purpose. LPs are great for their sound and, nowadays, nostalgia and novelty, but unless you want to listen to an entire album start to finish or go to the turntable after every song and try to find the hard-to-see "gaps" signifying the end of one track and the beginning of another, they're not practical.

CDs are great for making up those short-comings, and they're both recordable and portable, too. As any college kid or teenager can attest, road trips are naturally more fun with a stack of CDs; plus, they sound the best in a car since most car audio systems are built today specifically to account for the acoustics needed for CDs. Their drawback is while portable, they're not meant for physical activities like running, hiking, or anything involving great human exertion, since the CD, like the LP, can skip if mishandled.

MP3, while having the worst sound of the three, is the most convenient. You can have seemingly endless playlists with any combination of music you would like and, with a music player, take it anywhere you go. No need to worry about jogging too hard and causing a skip, as it's all digital now. But, what is gained in utility is lost in playback (as discussed above).

I own about 140 CDs and over 1400 MP3s (about 500 or so are from said CDs), and plan on investing in a turntable soon. Do I own any records? No, but with all the garage sales lately with people trying to make ends meet, I can help my fellow neighbors by taking their (gently-used) vinyl off their hands. Also, stores like FYE and Best Buy are getting back in the LP game, with a surprising amount of new titles available on vinyl. (However, buy local and support your local record store; Google it if you don't know where they are. They have great deals, up-to-date selections, and are super-knowledgable on all genres.) Personally, I will only buy LPs I know I would listen to in entirety, but that doesn't mean you should take my advice on that. Hell, if I find Rhythm of Youth for $1 somewhere, I'd spend it just to see if my friends really do dance.