I think TLD is Barry's best Bond score. It's the only film that he wrote three proper songs for, and he uses them all brilliantly throughout the score along with the Bond Theme and a few other themes he wrote. I think it's on the same level as OHMSS. Both have electronics of their time, though I'd say the Moog holds up better today than the 1980s drum machine.
The fact that Barry created three songs, and wove those melodies through the score is one of the main reasons that I rate TLD's soundtrack so highly. I am always quick to praise any Bond score that uses the theme song's melody as a recurring motif throughout the film. The Living Daylights goes the extra mile in this regard, providing three songs with melodies that perform a variety of roles throughout the film. The Living Daylights and Where Has Everybody Gone provide excellent material for action cues, and Where Has Everybody Gone even provides some brooding emotion at some points. Meanwhile If There Was a Man is a romantic theme on par with many classic Barry romantic tunes. These three films add a great deal to The Living Daylights, helping to make it a memorable Bond film - one of my all time favourites in fact - despite there being a few glaring weaknesses in the film. The impact of these weaknesses are greatly lessened by Barry's well thought out, detailed and coherent score.
Good points. I think that "Where Has Everybody Gone" and "If There Was a Man" provide layers to Necros and Kara, respectively, that technically aren't there. Barry doesn't often give characters themes like this, and when he does it's usually a shorter motif like for Oddjob or Wint and Kidd. I really love how "Where Has Everybody Gone" is both source music and a character theme in the score. It's brilliant! OHMSS is the only other score that Barry put this same amount of care into when he uses "We Have All the Time in the World" purely as a love theme for Tracy. Typically Barry's love themes are used for multiple romantic interests in the Bond films, and when they're the same as a title theme they especially lose impact. But as a counterpoint to this, Barry develops the Goldfinger theme so much throughout the score for different purposes, and that's another kind of genius. He attempts to do the same with TMWTGG, and it doesn't have the same effect. But to me, TLD shows a level of maturity and complexity from Barry that I don't think he demonstrates in any other score, Bond or otherwise.
Well said. TLD is easily my favourite Barry score for all the reasons you mentioned. He had a real knack for bringing to life elements in a script that weren't strong enough on their own. OHMSS and YOLT are great examples of this and are two of his other greatest scores.
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Good points. I think that "Where Has Everybody Gone" and "If There Was a Man" provide layers to Necros and Kara, respectively, that technically aren't there. Barry doesn't often give characters themes like this, and when he does it's usually a shorter motif like for Oddjob or Wint and Kidd. I really love how "Where Has Everybody Gone" is both source music and a character theme in the score. It's brilliant! OHMSS is the only other score that Barry put this same amount of care into when he uses "We Have All the Time in the World" purely as a love theme for Tracy. Typically Barry's love themes are used for multiple romantic interests in the Bond films, and when they're the same as a title theme they especially lose impact. But as a counterpoint to this, Barry develops the Goldfinger theme so much throughout the score for different purposes, and that's another kind of genius. He attempts to do the same with TMWTGG, and it doesn't have the same effect. But to me, TLD shows a level of maturity and complexity from Barry that I don't think he demonstrates in any other score, Bond or otherwise.
Well said. TLD is easily my favourite Barry score for all the reasons you mentioned. He had a real knack for bringing to life elements in a script that weren't strong enough on their own. OHMSS and YOLT are great examples of this and are two of his other greatest scores.
8. TMwtGG 9. AVtaK 10. TSWLM 11. SF 12. LtK 13. TND 14. YOLT
15. NTtD 16. MR 17. LaLD 18. GF 19. SP 20. DN 21. TB
22. TWiNE 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF