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Sam Smith has been tasked with writing the latest theme for a James Bond movie, namely Spectre.
For some reason, he named it Writing’s on the Wall, but if you can hear those words amongst this high-pitched warbling pile of pants which sounds like someone’s poured ice cubes down his underwear, meeting with his bollocks, then you’re a better man than I.
The song only took just 20 minutes to write, but then that’s not always a bad thing, since in that time you could write The Jam‘s That’s Entertainment AND REM‘s Losing My Religion together.
The BBC’s Colin Paterson said on Breakfast, of Smith’s falsetto musings, that it’s a “karaoke disaster” and that it’s good enough as a Bond theme, but not a classic. I would disagree it’s good at all. Well, I have.
For me, I found it completely forgettable soon after hearing it!
I also hated Adele‘s Skyfall. In fact, as for that film, it was great up until the opening credits arrived, with her song and then the rest of the film blew big chunks as I detailed in my review. I seriously think all critics who said they loved it must’ve been warped, or paid off to gush about it because it was the 50th anniversary Bond movie.
Colin also said to try and listen to the verse without thinking of Michael Jackson‘s Earth Song. Personally, I try not to think about anything to do with Wacko Jacko. His was a very bizarre world.
That said, Daniel Craig’s initial James Bond movie, Casino Royale, also didn’t have a great tune. The song was “You Know My Name”. Can you remember how it went? Or even the name of the person who sang it? No, you can’t. (It was Chris Cornell, he from Soundgarden who sang the wonderful Black Hole Sun back in 1994, a track where the chanting of the title goes back and forth between the left and right speakers. At the time, I once heard this in HMV, Stockport, and was caught right in the middle of them. The distance between myself and the speakers gave such a power to that hearing which I’ve never managed to since capture).
Macca also gave us a great tune in 1973 with the theme from Live And Let Die, but my favourite is the Bond theme you probably won’t recognise – kd lang‘s Surrender.
That’s because it was, sadly, never a main theme. It played out over the closing credits of 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, starring Pierce Brosnan, but is clearly a far more ‘Bond’ song than Sheryl Crow’s limp effort with the same name as the title of the movie.
So, what do you think of the new Sam Smith Spectre song? Check it out below on Spotify, and then below that is the video for kd lang’s Surrender set to the title sequence for Tomorrow Never Dies.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.