Anything Goes : Best and Worst Bond Song by Richard "RB" Botto

I love all the Bond Movies, I think I would agree with you on the worse.

Hard to pick a best one. I think Nobody Does It Better (The Spy Who Loved Me) fits so perfectly with that film. That's one that immediately comes to mind.

"For Your Eyes Only" by Sheena Easton and "Live and Let Die" by Paul Mc Cartney are pretty good. Love the Beatles!

For Your Eyes Only was a good one. Perfect for the time. Live and Let Die also fit what was a rather odd plot for a Bond film. Good choices.

Of course, Goldfinger was pretty classic as well.

I like that too! Here is a good version by the original singer Shirley Bassey http://youtu.be/51Wg6k9cWhM

Carly Simon "The Spy Who Loved Me" for the best.... That crappy Madonna song from that crappy Bond movie for the worst.... BTW, best score for a Bond movie IMHO, Marvin Hamlisch for the aforementioned "The Spy Who Loved Me"... have it on my Iphone and listen to it every week :)

You're thinking of Die Another Day, which I agree was completely awful. Hamlisch's score for The Spy Who Loved Me was off the charts. Surprised they didn't go back to him a few more times. Navarro's song for Casino Royale was decent. Not the greatest song, per se, but it fit with the whole "reboot" theme.

Die another Day was totally horrible, very weak execution.

Got to love Shirley Bassey ---- managed to forget the bad songs..... like the Australian Bond .......

Jack White didn't do a bad job, he at least captured a bit of the essence of what a Bond theme should feel like. Just my opinion

Hard to argue with Goldfinger, Greg.

For me, the best songs aren't songs at all, but pure instrumental. The tune called "007" which I originally thought (given the title) was composed for "The Spy Who Loved Me", but which actually appeared on "From Russia With Love" a full 14 years earlier. "Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" comes, I think, from Thunderball (that, and the cameo from the DB5, are all I can commend from that film). I also love the siggy from On Her Majesty's Secret Service, from which also comes the sublime "We Have All the Time in the World". Goldfinger, obviously - but for me the film can do no wrong because of the Aston Martin DB5 with modifications which, as Sir Sean points out, was a bigger star than he was. As an aside, the DB5 almost never happened at all. Although, in the novel, Ian Fleming had Bond driving a battleship grey "DB III" (Aston Martin nerds like myself will tell you there was no such designation - the DB3 was a slab-sided racer from the early 50s, and the DB Mk III was the world's first hatchback in 1957), for reasons of cost the producers originally wanted a Jaguar. Then they were persuaded to go for an Aston, but the management at Aston Martin Lagonda were extremely sniffy, especially when it was revealed they intended to perform major surgery on the car. In the end, they managed to get one stunt car (the original, prototype DB5 registered BMT 216A), and two other cars for high speed shots (the additional weight of all the gubbins slowed the car down a lot) and publicity. Sad to relate BMT 216A was stolen from a hangar in Florida in 1986, and has yet (I believe) to be recovered. Anyway... The worst tunes for me are the Thunderball racket, and Madonna's effort for Die Another Day.

Some really cool info there, Andrew. Thanks for the contribution!

Welcome - only sorry the "Bond bore" in me happened to kill the thread...

LOL. Not at all.

I have all Bond movies at home and have watched them many times each, but for some reason I cannot like any of the songs much. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I always fast forward that part because I want to watch the movie itself. I do agree with Andrew a little bit, as I find that the best movie music is the instrumental ones. Just look at Star Wars, LOTR, and many more. They tend to grab hold of you more. What better way to represent pain then with instrumental music. That was my little thought on this.

Actually, you have a point. The purpose of incidental music is to direct the audience towards feelings appropriate to that point in the plot - or, in order to provide a sort of red herring, fooling the audience into feeling elated before delivering a crushing denuement. I use this technique quite deliberately in my opera, because a roller-coaster ride is meant to be more exciting than an aircraft's descent, which is altogether better without drama I find. "This is your captain speaking, and today I'm controlling the plane with telekinesis" does not inspire much confidence, in the same way unremitting disaster, much like unrelenting bliss, tends to pall after a while. Of course, the challenge is that once lyrics are added to music it then becomes harder to focus directly on the direction of the piece - the tendency is to let the words do the talking while letting the music play like a careless child. But it's always good to rein the music into your purpose, whether it's to provide a whimsical counterpoint to the lyrics, as in a dour tune but jolly lyrics, or vice-versa, or to press home the mood you wish to convey. Oftentimes, siggies with lyrics are musically bland but propped up, however ably, by the lyrics.

Does anyone remember the Moon Raker songs?

I guess the moon raker music was over shadowed by the stunts which were great for the time like driving on two wheels.

I think the driving on two wheels caper was in the Diamonds Are Forever movie, which was Sean Connery's return after wotsisface's one film. It was still sung by Shirley Bassey, but I'm not sure old Moony's up there with the best Bond movies, nor was the Moonraker soundtrack per se all that memorable.

you are quite correct.. my mind is going... From Wiki moonraker was the third of the three Bond films for which the theme song was performed by Shirley Bassey. Frank Sinatra was considered for the vocals, before Johnny Mathis was approached and offered the opportunity. Mathis was unhappy about the song and withdrew from the project, leaving the producers scrambling for a replacement. Kate Bush declined, so John Barry offered the song to Bassey within just weeks of the release date. As a result Bassey made the recordings with very short notice and as a result, she never regarded the song 'as her own' as she had never had the chance to perform it or promote it first. The film uses two versions of the title theme song, a ballad version heard over the main titles, and a disco version for the end titles. Confusingly, the United Artists single release labelled the tracks on the 7" single as "Moonraker (Main Title)" for the version used to close the film and "Moonraker (End Title)" for the track that opened the film. The song failed to make any real impact on the charts, which may partly be attributed to Bassey's failure to promote the single, given the last minute decision and the way in which it was quickly recorded to meet the schedule. As with We Have All The Time In The World back in 1969, Hal David wrote the lyrics. Paul Williams's original lyrics were discarded. Finally in 2005, Bassey sang the song for the first time outside James Bond on stage as part of a medley of her three Bond title songs. An instrumental strings version of the title theme was used in 2007 tourism commercials for the Dominican Republic. The score for Moonraker marked a turning point in John Barry's output, abandoning the Kentonesque brass of his earlier Bond scores and instead scoring the film with slow, rich string passages - a trend which Barry would continue in the 1980s with scores such as Out of Africa and Somewhere in Time.

I've got the "Best of Bond" soundtrack. "You Know My Name", is my favorite, and I also like "Thunderball" and "From Russia With Love" as well as "The World Is Not Enough". My least favorite is 'Die Another Day".

"You Know My Name" is rather lovely. Can't recall "The World is Not Enough", 'though if it's the Tina Turner effort, I personally have to pan that as I have a pathological aversion to Ms Turner's oeuvre: lovely person though she may be, her voice is far from lovely, to my ears...

You Know My Name is a good call, Jake. Good tune.

Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" is the best

I can sing it, along with those other ones. That's why I like them.

Bond ranks with my favorite film characters of all time. 'Die Another Day' theme was poorly done in choice. 'Goldfinger' by Eartha Kitt is perhaps the greatest Bond theme ever recorded.

Hi Kirby though I wish Eartha Kitt had a role in a bond film for she would be a perfect villain - it was Shirley Bassey who sang the theme songs to GoldFinger, Diamonds are forever and Moonraker ....

I don't know about the rest of you but Shirley Bassey and Streisand certainly out sang the younger artists in my books. No wonder Shirley got a standing ovation --- sorry but skyflat doesn't compare. Personal bias of course.