The music that doesn't HELP a Bond movie... ?

chrisisall

Dr. No- Terrible music for the most part IMO, yet the awesomeness of the movie succeeded despite it.
The Spy Who Loved me- I grew up in this era, so I can groove to the electronic bits here, but it ain't classic Bond for me. The movie may survive it for those born after 1970, but they must be forgiving.
For Your Eyes Only- no... just, NO. The Rocky/disco thing just kills an otherwise passable flick for me.
Licence To Kill- yeah, it's okay, I don't hate it or anything.... 8-)
Goldeneye- go on Eric, make us wait...make us wait... FINALLY the theme! X-(

Pet note peeves? Hated music cues?
Wax negatively orchestrationally here. )

Napoleon Plural

I'm okay with Dr No's music mostly, it helps its 'otherness' as with Live and Let Die. The Spy Who Loved Me has a tinny sound but that may simply be cos it's on digital these days so it suffers, especially Bond 77, which has the high-hat too far forward in the mix.

In the same way I think GF's score was better in analogue, it's all about the sound, not the tunes. Time to revisit those old VHS tapes.

Personally I don't always care for Barry's work on OHMSS and TLD, I think his stuff is better on the Connery and Moore flicks to help make them a bit deeper, to lend gravitas.

I agree with FYEO, of course NSNA is the nadir of scores.

Higgins

I found the FYEO score one of the many highlights but Kamens LTK score is a bit annoying as it was ott imo.

I also don't fancy Barrys TLD score and also AVTAK had major flaws imo. OHMSS was Barrys work as usual,

BIG TAM

It's a given in my book that John Barry is the Bond supremo. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN's slide whistle aside, he never really puts a foot wrong.

Not keen on DR. NO. The James Bond theme's obviously brilliant but the rest isn't great. But then it is the first film, so not everything's going to be perfect from the off.

LIVE & LET DIE & THE SPY WHO LOVED ME both had scores I wasn't keen on. The former seemed a bit bland, the latter too disco, but I've warmed to them over the years. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME in particular has some good themes. Anybody ever notice the music accompanying Bond & Anya in the temple is very similar to the FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE pre-credits sequence music?

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is fairly poor in my book. The only decent scoring is in the whole ski-chase sequence. The song played at Gonzales' villa is appalling.

LICENCE TO KILL is typical Michael Kamen bombast & too reliant on Bond theme variations. It's well orchestrated but there are no colours in the musical palette.

GOLDENEYE has its moments but Eric Serra's industrial score is a bit dated now. To be honest, it was in 1995!

But David Arnold doesn't get off scott-free. He writes good themes but throws in everything but the kitchen sink for his actions cues. Interestingly, I felt he was injecting more variety as he went along & his last two were pretty good. A pity he hasn't had the chance to do SKYFALL in a way.

moonraker84

I quite like the calypso music played often in Dr. No, the biggest problem i have with any piece of music throughout the series is at the end of OHMSS, after the tragic shooting, the "James Bond" theme is played over the credits which i think is inappropriate given the tragic circumstances, i think they should have used the Louis Armstrong "We have all the time in the world" theme that they played earlier in the film, cracking song.