What an intriguing choice. Sam Smith is to sing this year’s James Bond theme song for the movie Spectre, entitled Writing’s On The Wall. I can hear it now. Sam Smith’s wonderful voice, veering from a sensually low murmur to a keening contralto of emotional pain, declares that the “writing’s on the wall” – for what? A thrillingly sensual but doomed relationship, perchance? The kind you might have with a devastatingly handsome secret agent whom you can’t help loving even though he’s using you?
Well, it’s not going to be about the council’s graffiti-removal initiative. The Bond song, like Bond himself, was born in an era when the torch song was an accepted chart genre. At their best, Bond theme-songs are super-strength torch songs, and I’ve always thought that As Long As He Needs Me from Oliver! or I Don’t Know How To Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar would be great Bond songs, if you could imply that you’re not singing about Bill Sikes or Jesus Christ, but 007. Like all classic Bond songs, Sam Smith’s Writing’s On The Wall will probably allude, obliquely, to the pain of the women that Bond has loved and left, conflating this with 007’s own super-cool cynicism and survival ethic. And Sam Smith will do it with some thermo-nuclear orchestral blasts, some mighty guitar power chords, and maybe a sudden, shattering silence before the final chorus.
I love the beautiful clarity of Matt Monro’s voice, singing From Russia With Love (1963), which hints at the movie’s glamorous jetsetting: “I’ve travelled the world to learn / I must return from Russia with love.” Shirley Bassey is magnificently declamatory and outrageously masturbatory in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) (“They are all I need to please me / They can stimulate and tease me”). This is the voice of someone who isn’t fooled by men, and who, like men in general and 007 in particular, is sexily out for what she can get. Her voice makes a gorgeously crazed aria of Goldfinger (1964); atypically, that’s about the villain, but when Shirley complains: “His heart is cold,” she surely has alluringly aloof Sean Connery on her mind, not Gert Fröbe. A good Bond song is angry, despairing or defiant, which is why I don’t care for Carly Simon’s simperingly submissive Nobody Does It Better for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).
Paul and Linda’s McCartney’s Live And Let Die (1973, performed by Wings) is a cracking Bond song, a catchy post-Beatles masterpiece. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Garbage doing the operatic theme-song The World Is Not Enough (1999), with that note of glowering dissatisfaction — the kind of thing that drives Bond villains to push for global domination. The Luciferian vocal plunge of Adele’s Skyfall (2012) was superb; the song wittily alluded to the chord-progression in Monty Norman’s classic theme-tune, and was beautifully tailored for a pre-credit sequence. Sam Smith has a lot to live up to.
