I´m not a fan of the falsetto - but I love the song and have gotten used to the falsetto.
As for Gaga, I was never into her pop music - but after A STAR IS BORN I think she is a fantastic performer, she absolutely has a great voice, and she has the instincts to make a classic Bond tune not only commercial but also timely.
Going for edgier artists might please those with that taste. But never forget: Bond is targeted at a mainstream audience. Gaga doing the next song, with a potential second Oscar win? A no-brainer.
I’m sure people were probably equally bemused with a-ha at the time if falsetto is an issue - though The Living Daylights has always been my favourite Bond theme.
My issues with WOTW were with the lyrics (ie: in no James Bond theme should the lyrics How do I live? How do I breathe? When you’re not here I’m suffocating be included imo) - plus the whole thing was a blatant attempt to lightly rework Adele’s theme from Skyfall but worse. But yes, Bond is popular culture so it makes sense to have pop artists - though they seem to regularly flirt with going slightly edgier - ie: Radiohead almost doing Spectre, Chris Cornell doing You Know My Name, KD Lang in TND, Scott Walker in TWINE - so I suspect it’s not out of the realms of possibility, certainly noone suggested in this thread is making anything unpalatable to a mainstream audience or full on edgy - I’d argue it fits the key Bond audience better than the pop artists they’re targeting - though Gaga would work fine now that she has transitioned to a more rounded sound.
Either way, its all just ideas - I think its all pretty clear we know these more independent artists don’t really have a shot at getting in haha
Not really seeing your logic there. That review quote is bang on the money, if you ask me. You Know My Name has a nice tune but is rather flat: it kind of refuses to go anywhere, and Cornell’s voice doesn’t help it. Are you saying they’re criticising it because it’s not Goldfinger? Because that’s not what they’re saying at all.
I haven’t a clue what’s going on with the quotes in this post, by the way. I can’t work out how this forum works.
I don’t think so: Madonna was pretty massive at the time and was riding high (well, okay: maybe a year or so after) and was producing pretty superior pop with interesting producers. I don’t have a clue what Gaga is doing at the moment: is she doing interesting stuff?
I loved You Know My Name for what its worth - great song and successfully separated Craig’s Bond off from the previous Bonds with a new style and voice as much of Casino Royale successfully did
I don’t think Bond is that emo - he might be contemplating issues similarly but it is certainly not a Bond-esque phrasing - this was teenage angst-poetry at best.
For me it is a nice tune, but it just doesn’t take off. It kind of just repeats itself and I want it to spread its wings a bit more. I remember playing it to a mate and he said exactly the same thing: " oh it doesn’t really go anywhere, does it?" It wears the clothes of a rock song but isn’t one really: Another Way To Die does that job much better. Cornell’s performance is pretty flat all the way through: he starts off shouting and ends shouting, and has a curiously unemotional way of doing it. He’s like Dave Grohl in that way- I don’t believe he means it.
Oh, that’s who we’ll get isn’t it? The boring bloody Foo Fighters.
Yes that’s true: it did it’s job. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it: I really like the tune and in the titles it works well, but as a song it does feel a bit sort of pretend, and as I say: it never quite goes anywhere.
Yeah it’s trite old stuff. The string bit is lovely though: better than Skyfall on that point, but it feels separate from the song itself.
I went on YouTube because I thought someone must’ve added some drums to it at some point, but all of the versions I could find were rubbish players!
I mean its just a quirk of his style of music and style of singing, i dont think it should necessarily preclude it from being emotional because it has a certain tone that doesn’t gel with everyone - It is meant to be a cold hearted assassin of a song - so the lack of emotional variation is fine with me. I can take meaning from the lyrics. I don’t need the singer to sound sad when the lyrics are sad if that makes sense - I certainly put it up there amongst the better crafted Bond themes and I was glad they made an interesting choice for their new 007.
Okay, I cannot resist to suggest that “shoot ´em up, bang bang” should not have been part of any Bond theme. Leslie Bricusse and Hal David must be turning in their graves.
Er… not sure what this means. He doesn’t really get to say what I believe.
He never sounds anything more than unconvincingly angry to me. Do you think the Foo Fighters are really good?
I guess as much as Sam Smith’s song grates on me, his performance in it is good: he sounds like he means it.
Shoot em up bang bang can join the never shoulda been Bond lyrics camp along with “Sigmund Freud - analyse this” and that sorta grunt thing she does soon after
