For me, that’s one of the top Bond songs. And “Goldfinger” was kind of iconic and makes me think all things Bond at once. I’m also one of those who doesn’t like “Live and Let Die” as a Bond theme. (Well, honestly, I don’t much like that song at all.)
I might have to go with Moonraker, even though I didn’t love the movie, but I really didn’t like the song, so the contrast is still stark.
Most don’t, thus the 
.
Listening to them all together (they’re all listed, ranked, and YouTubed here), it’s clear that from at least Timothy Dalton’s run forward, the songs are all pretty much the same. I mean, everyone tries real hard to give it their own twist, but still, with the exceptions of “The Living Daylights” and “No Time to Die,” they all kind of feel like a musical paint-by-numbers project.
My thoughts verbatim – stop reading my mind!
The Goldeneye song sounds rather like the Goldfinger song.
I remember liking the film “The Man with the Golden Gun” just fine, though it’s been awhile since I’ve watched it. But nothing about the theme song makes sense.
Love is required whenever he’s hired
Really?
He makes a point of having sex right before he heads out to play sniper; figures it improves his performance.
You’ve seen all the movies up to that point, right? I think Lulu was onto something with that line…
A purely business, ‘warrior monk’ James Bond would be a far different portrayal than any we’ve seen so far. Sounds more like one of the villains, frankly.
Vargas does not drink, does not smoke, does not make love. What do you do, Vargas?
I can’t come up with a good answer, but Damn! Nice topic to pose on the board. I’ll be looking forward to reading this for a while!
Best song of the entire series! (And yeah, I don’t really consider it a ‘Bond’ film, either. Movie also featured The Look Of Love, which is outstanding as well)
The answer to this thread con not be Moonraker, for the simple reason that it was sung by Shirley Bassey. That woman could belt out a song like nobody’s business.
Not a great song, but a pretty good Bond movie. It’s the closest Roger Moore comes to being a badass.
Did the version in the movie include the lyrics? As an instrumental, that song is awesome; but the lyrics really drag it down.
I’m partial to Weird Al’s version:
If you don’t care for Tina Turner’s rendition of “Goldeneye” (I found it underwhelming despite liking Turner’s other work), check out Caroline Henderson’s take with the Danish National Symphony. The lyrics still have nothing to do with the plot of the movie, but Henderson belts it out like Shirley Bassey at her prime. (Oddly, her rendition of “Goldeneye” is a miss even though she does a great interpretation of “Diamonds Are Forever”, which is an equally ridiculous song.)
My vote is “For Russia With Love” by Matt Munro. The theme is a sleeper even though the movie, filmed before producers figured out the “Bond Formula” that became increasingly tiresome, is one of the most narratively interesting Bond films. It isn’t terrible in the way that Madonna’s “Die Another Day” or Sam Smith’s “The Writing’s on the Wall” is, but those songs were paired with equally bad films, whereas From Russia With Love is basically the Bond version of West By Northwest. Runner up is For Your Eyes Only, which had an almost equally dirgeful title song paired with what should be considered Roger Moore’s best portrayal of Bond.
I think Shirley Bassey’s rendition of the title track to Moonraker is fine, and John Barry’s scoring in general is a welcome reintroduction into what had become an increasingly disco-influenced set of musical influences (unfortunately he did not return for For Your Eyes Only which had an abysmal soundtrack), but it should have been an end title track, not an opener. As it is, it takes the piss out of the cold open scene which presaged the Point Break skydiving without a parachute by more than a decade. In general, Moonraker is not a particularly good film even for the Roger Moore era though at least it features a female counterpart that isn’t totally useless.
Worst Bond movie with best song is hands down Goldfinger. Seriously, even though this is the film that basically cemented the “Bond Formula”, in the film Bond accomplishes exactly nothing except for raping Pussy Galore out of her lesbianism (implied in the movie, explicit in the book) and cheating at golf while nearly being killed in the opening scene because he is a horndog, getting the Masterson sisters killed while being captured no less than three times, destroying the tricked out Aston Martin DB5, and only defeating Oddjob through blind luck. In this film, Bond is more incompetent than Archer at his most inebriated, and it takes all the way to Skyfall for another movie to present an even more inept portrayal of the character. (To be fair, every character in Skyfall appears to have undergone a frontal lobotomy, so it is hard to just single out Bond for that catastrophe. I have no love for Adele’s title track, though, and thus, it does not meet the criteria of the o.p.)
I had a point when I began this post but it has since escaped like Ernst Stravo Blofeld in an erupting volcanic lair.
Stranger
Huh… Huh… He said, 'Erupting".
Are we still doing ‘phrasing’?
Stranger
Seconded. It was the first song I thought of before I even got the thread open.
Wasn’t the best Bond movie, though. That IMHO goes to The Living Daylights which had a great current events plot as well as the best Bond.
FYEO also wasn’t the worst. I suffered through Moonstinker at the theater when it came out.
You can see all the Bond movies ranked by IMDB ratings here, which is not perfect but is as good as any other list if you ask me as it’s an aggregation of highly imperfect opinions:
It has 2006’s Casino Royale at the top but Chris Cornell’s You Know My Name is utterly brilliant.
Goldeneye is up there and while it’s certainly not a bad Bond theme it’s the first one you get to in the list where the song is a bit meh. It’s got all the right elements to it and Tina Turner has a good Bond themey voice which she throws around in suitable ways, but the song somehow just doesn’t really grab me. You know what I mean: it grabs you by the arms and sways you with a bit of vigour but a Bond theme should at least threaten to squeeze your dangly bits.
“Diamonds are Forever” the song is at best unmemorable while I have always found the movie entertaining. I loathed the songs in Die Another Die and A View to Kill, but as others have pointed out, the movies suck as well. I do not recall the songs in other post-Moore Bond films (I haven’t even seen the last three).
Slightly off-topic, this is arguably the best fake-Bond song in a far-from-the-worst Bond-inspired movie:
