I find it hilarious that people are criticizing the lyrics. Consider some of these past gems:
"He looks at the world and wants it all, and he strikes like Thunderball."
"He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot..."
"Get your hopes up way too high, living's in the way we die."
"Just like the moonraker knows his dream will come true someday, I know that you are only a kiss away"
"A sacred why? , a mystery gaping inside....The weekends why...Until we dance into the fire."
"Goldeneye, not lace or leather -- Golden chain take him to the spot."
I mean, COME ON.
I get it if you don't like the song. Personally, I do -- I think it has a very 21st-century "Live and Let Die" kinda vibe -- but to criticize the lyrics kinda ignores the fact that Bond theme lyrics have pretty much always been crap.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,750Chief of Staff
Back in "olden times" Bond themes were not much of a subject of discussion, they just appeared with the movie. You took 'em or left 'em and the world went on.
I recall "From Russia with Love" being played alot on the radio, as was "Goldfinger", but the rest of the Bond themes were pretty much under the radar with the exception of "Live and Let Die" (Paul was still mostly famous for being the Cute Beatle) and Mavin Hamlish's very commercial "Nobody does it Better" - which was a perfect song for a "cola" commerical if ever there was one. With the MTV generation, the themes get more attention.
This new song, as already pointed out seems no worse than many that preceeded it. As far as lyrics go - I don't think any of the songwriters gave them much thought after "Goldfinger". So those from "Another Way To Die" seem par for the course.
I don't listen much to contemporary music, but don't find this song too radical - except for alot of "moaning" and "wailing" which gets tedious, and seems to be a way of getting around writing lyrics. But what the heck, I didn't much like Mel Torme either.....
I still want to know what happened to "A Whisper of Love, a Whisper of Hate" a Casino Royale chapter title which was also featured on the novel's dust jacket. Those words cry out for a theme to be written around them, but it appears no one noticed the possibility.
As the wise ASP9mm pointed out, the Bond theme is pretty much a package - and run together with the Gunbarrel, PTS, and animated credits, I think this song will fullfill it's mission adequately. I just hope David Arnold's score with be fuller than his good work in CR'06.
I get it if you don't like the song. Personally, I do -- I think it has a very 21st-century "Live and Let Die" kinda vibe -- but to criticize the lyrics kinda ignores the fact that Bond theme lyrics have pretty much always been crap.
It's the style of the lyrics I detest. And coupled with their shouty, messy delivery it's all just garbage.
Yes, most Bond songs have contained weird lyrics - when you've got to force a title that makes little lyrical sense in their somehow that's what happens.
But "Another player with the slick trigger finger for Her Majesty"? Crass. "Suit 'em up, bang bang"? It's more suited to an inner London gang than James Bond. We've got him out there for his brovvas with his honeyz. I don't care if the rest of the screeched chorus doesn't make any sense - I don't actually have any problem with those lyrics, save for their God-awful delivery - but for a quintessentially British agent who likes some finer things in life, street language just doesn't fit.
Don't get me started on the mistimed woahs interspersed with random clunking guitar, that's where I have to turn it off. Quite literally.
It could be worse though, Jack's wife Meg could've been on the drums 8-)
B-)Couldn't agree more. To be a truly memorable Bond song it has to work outside of the confines of the film itself and titles etc. I don't hate it, because I can't muster that much feeling about it. Cannnot help feeling that Winehouse may have given us something more exciting, particularly if Arnold had been overseeing it.
I cannot remeber the last Bond song that had any kind of impact since AVTAK !
EON (if it's them who make the selection) seem incapable of making decent choices in this respect, but they carry on regardless, getting it wrong time after time. I am not hankering after a Shirley Bassey Brass fest, as I think that there is a genuine opportunity to do something fresh that is truly representative of now, but acknowledges the history. This is not it though. Ho-hum roll on Bond 23
I find it hilarious that people are criticizing the lyrics. Consider some of these past gems:
"He looks at the world and wants it all, and he strikes like Thunderball."
"He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot..."
"Get your hopes up way too high, living's in the way we die."
"Just like the moonraker knows his dream will come true someday, I know that you are only a kiss away"
"A sacred why? , a mystery gaping inside....The weekends why...Until we dance into the fire."
"Goldeneye, not lace or leather -- Golden chain take him to the spot."
I mean, COME ON.
I get it if you don't like the song. Personally, I do -- I think it has a very 21st-century "Live and Let Die" kinda vibe -- but to criticize the lyrics kinda ignores the fact that Bond theme lyrics have pretty much always been crap.
Very true Lexi .My issue is not with the lyrics, it's with the overall lacklustre/dialed in feel of this. Not nearly modern or 21st century enough in my view, but the lyrics are not the problem.
Most lyrics don't make sense. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me anyone? But lyrics should have a kind of poetic quality to them. As (I believe it was) Midge Ure says, lyrics need to sound right, even if they don't make sense. The lyrics to YKMN don't make much sense, but they go with the delivery and the music. They convey a message, which is, without getting too mushy about it, what music is all about after all.
As Pavarotti said, singing is 10% talent and 90% heart. So if you've got the emotion behind it, you can sing pretty much anything and carry it. And that's the problem I've got with these vocals - there's no heart behind it.
Still doesn't stop me singing along to it, but I'll be leaving out all the lame 'ooo ahh' stuff, because - frankly - it reminds me of the Wurzels
Most lyrics don't make sense. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me anyone? But lyrics should have a kind of poetic quality to them.
Yeah; exactly- these lyrics have good rhythm, an internal rhyming structure and convey the usual Bond-y, dangerous, campy stuff. Seems fine to me. Not as eloquently phrased as in YKMN; a bit more deconstructed and raw perhaps, but that's how the song's constructed anyway, so they fit the intention.
At least it's not some schoolboy thing about oral sex like Diamonds Are Forever: never really figured out how that fitted a quintessentially British agent who likes some finer things in life, myself.
It could be worse though, Jack's wife Meg could've been on the drums 8-)
Wife?
Wife. Although they've said they're brother and sister it was revealed that they'd once been married. They're divorced now but still perform together, so I guess saying they're sibs is an easy-enough (if creepy) way to explain the same name.
I like traditional Bond music. I like blues, too. I also like contemporary soul and R&B.
But this mish-mash is an embarrassing mess, a squandered opportunity. As someone else has said, it sounds, at best, like an early draft - it's nowhere near a finished piece. Without doubt, the worst Bond theme ever.
It makes me feel quite angry that this could have been allowed to go so badly wrong.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
never really figured out how that fitted a quintessentially British agent who likes some finer things in life
I think a quintessentially British agent, from a nation that had Carry On, Benny Hill, Kenny Everett et al, would be a little more at home with school boy oral sex jokes than he would be hangin' wid da honeyz - after all, Bond himself has made a few through his 21 films, and had a leading lady named after one in Moonraker. I say "I'd", as again, that's my opinion.
It's a catchy number, but not my cup of tea for a Bond title track. I have nothing against hip hop, but I'd prefer something modern yet epic. Garbage was a great example.
However this fan boy never wants to see lyrics such as "player" and "slick trigger finger" associated with Bond ever again. Just my personal preference. I did like the "golden tongue" part though, because Bond can be a cad at times.
This song is a real mess. I disliked YKMN, but that song was simply forgettable. This one, however, is memorable in its awfulness. The lyrics and the music are both horrible. Maybe it's just me, but I want a Bond song to have a strong melody that will stay with you for years, and lush orchestration featuring lots of strings. Needless to say, I was terribly disappointed with AWTD. Some songs still work without full-fledged melodies, but they must have powerful hooks (perfect examples are some of Prince's songs, which I really like). However, AWTD doesn't have anything that I would call a hook either. It just has some of the most monotonous singing I've heard yet. I think I'll have to go dig up some old Bond torch songs like "Nobody Does It Better", "We Have All The Time In The World", "For Your Eyes Only", etc... and listen to them a dozen times just to clear my head.
I did like the "golden tongue" part though, because Bond can be a cad at times.
Which just reminds me of Deep Purple's 'Knocking at your Back Door', which contains the marvellous lyric :
So they put her on the hitlist,
of a common, cunning liguist,
a Master of many tongues.
Now she eases gently from her Aston to her Bentley.
Suddenly she feels so young....
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,750Chief of Staff
It's a catchy number, but not my cup of tea for a Bond title track. I have nothing against hip hop, but I'd prefer something modern yet epic. Garbage was a great example.
Do you think AWTD is a hip-hop track, Alex ? I'm astonished if you think it is.
It's each to their own, I know - but I think this track is modern yet epic, whereas the Garbage track was just bland.
It's not the lyrics that bother me. To me it doesn't matter if the comments about Bond are expressed in a verbal style which fits a musical genre - 'gangsta' rap - rather than in Bond's own style of language. But what DOES matter to me is that the MUSIC and the production values are simply dreadful... Musically, imho, this track doesn't work as a Bond theme and it doesn't cut it as anything ELSE, either... in ANY genre! Okay, I can vaguely see where they wanted to go with it... but maybe the creative overseers at Eon should have teamed up Alicia Keys with people who would have REALLY known what to do with this kind of rap/rock hybrid, e.g. Rage Against The Machine (cf. 'Killing In The Name')
The Bond themes which have been hitherto regarded as the least successful, such as TMWTGG and DAD, have always had redeeming qualities. I fear that this is not the case with 'Another Way To Die'. In the messy TMWTGG theme, John Barry's attempt to keep up-to-date and to marry his own established Bond sound with the style of the big orchestral 'freak-outs' introduced in Wings' LALD was, at best, unconvincing: but at least the TMWTGG theme provided a number of evocative action and romance cues for the movie's incidental score - and it lent itself, as well, to a cool ragtime arrangement on the soundtrack album! As for the DAD track, it lacked a melody, but Madonna's precision and charisma as a vocalist were a saving grace and the track just about passed muster as a serviceable techno piece.
Unfortunately, 'Another Way To Die' doesn't hang together at all, and despite a few interesting intentions it falls apart in a shambles... Alicia Keys' talents aren't enough to rescue it. Of course, it's far too late for a re-write or re-edit: the best that can be hoped, now, is that the titles sequence against which the damned thing has got to be played turns out to be clever enough in itself to offer some sort of contextual damage limitation. And let's hope that QOS's incidental score provides plenty of compensation and stakes out its own ground independently of this lame theme.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Comments
"He looks at the world and wants it all, and he strikes like Thunderball."
"He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot..."
"Get your hopes up way too high, living's in the way we die."
"Just like the moonraker knows his dream will come true someday, I know that you are only a kiss away"
"A sacred why? , a mystery gaping inside....The weekends why...Until we dance into the fire."
"Goldeneye, not lace or leather -- Golden chain take him to the spot."
I mean, COME ON.
I get it if you don't like the song. Personally, I do -- I think it has a very 21st-century "Live and Let Die" kinda vibe -- but to criticize the lyrics kinda ignores the fact that Bond theme lyrics have pretty much always been crap.
Yes dear, but what about the song ? :v
Another Way To Die - I absolutely bloody love it !
I can even stand Alicia Keyes singing on this one
It's more Bondian than YKMN, which took a while for me to like - and I love the dirrty sound of the guitar riff.
I still think it's a good tune marred by poor singing. There's only about two notes in the entire vocal line.
I recall "From Russia with Love" being played alot on the radio, as was "Goldfinger", but the rest of the Bond themes were pretty much under the radar with the exception of "Live and Let Die" (Paul was still mostly famous for being the Cute Beatle) and Mavin Hamlish's very commercial "Nobody does it Better" - which was a perfect song for a "cola" commerical if ever there was one. With the MTV generation, the themes get more attention.
This new song, as already pointed out seems no worse than many that preceeded it. As far as lyrics go - I don't think any of the songwriters gave them much thought after "Goldfinger". So those from "Another Way To Die" seem par for the course.
I don't listen much to contemporary music, but don't find this song too radical - except for alot of "moaning" and "wailing" which gets tedious, and seems to be a way of getting around writing lyrics. But what the heck, I didn't much like Mel Torme either.....
I still want to know what happened to "A Whisper of Love, a Whisper of Hate" a Casino Royale chapter title which was also featured on the novel's dust jacket. Those words cry out for a theme to be written around them, but it appears no one noticed the possibility.
As the wise ASP9mm pointed out, the Bond theme is pretty much a package - and run together with the Gunbarrel, PTS, and animated credits, I think this song will fullfill it's mission adequately. I just hope David Arnold's score with be fuller than his good work in CR'06.
-{
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
Yes, most Bond songs have contained weird lyrics - when you've got to force a title that makes little lyrical sense in their somehow that's what happens.
But "Another player with the slick trigger finger for Her Majesty"? Crass. "Suit 'em up, bang bang"? It's more suited to an inner London gang than James Bond. We've got him out there for his brovvas with his honeyz. I don't care if the rest of the screeched chorus doesn't make any sense - I don't actually have any problem with those lyrics, save for their God-awful delivery - but for a quintessentially British agent who likes some finer things in life, street language just doesn't fit.
Don't get me started on the mistimed woahs interspersed with random clunking guitar, that's where I have to turn it off. Quite literally.
It could be worse though, Jack's wife Meg could've been on the drums 8-)
I cannot remeber the last Bond song that had any kind of impact since AVTAK !
EON (if it's them who make the selection) seem incapable of making decent choices in this respect, but they carry on regardless, getting it wrong time after time. I am not hankering after a Shirley Bassey Brass fest, as I think that there is a genuine opportunity to do something fresh that is truly representative of now, but acknowledges the history. This is not it though. Ho-hum roll on Bond 23
Very true Lexi .My issue is not with the lyrics, it's with the overall lacklustre/dialed in feel of this. Not nearly modern or 21st century enough in my view, but the lyrics are not the problem.
As Pavarotti said, singing is 10% talent and 90% heart. So if you've got the emotion behind it, you can sing pretty much anything and carry it. And that's the problem I've got with these vocals - there's no heart behind it.
Still doesn't stop me singing along to it, but I'll be leaving out all the lame 'ooo ahh' stuff, because - frankly - it reminds me of the Wurzels
Wife?
Yeah; exactly- these lyrics have good rhythm, an internal rhyming structure and convey the usual Bond-y, dangerous, campy stuff. Seems fine to me. Not as eloquently phrased as in YKMN; a bit more deconstructed and raw perhaps, but that's how the song's constructed anyway, so they fit the intention.
At least it's not some schoolboy thing about oral sex like Diamonds Are Forever: never really figured out how that fitted a quintessentially British agent who likes some finer things in life, myself.
Wife. Although they've said they're brother and sister it was revealed that they'd once been married. They're divorced now but still perform together, so I guess saying they're sibs is an easy-enough (if creepy) way to explain the same name.
But this mish-mash is an embarrassing mess, a squandered opportunity. As someone else has said, it sounds, at best, like an early draft - it's nowhere near a finished piece. Without doubt, the worst Bond theme ever.
It makes me feel quite angry that this could have been allowed to go so badly wrong.
I think a quintessentially British agent, from a nation that had Carry On, Benny Hill, Kenny Everett et al, would be a little more at home with school boy oral sex jokes than he would be hangin' wid da honeyz - after all, Bond himself has made a few through his 21 films, and had a leading lady named after one in Moonraker. I say "I'd", as again, that's my opinion.
However this fan boy never wants to see lyrics such as "player" and "slick trigger finger" associated with Bond ever again. Just my personal preference. I did like the "golden tongue" part though, because Bond can be a cad at times.
Which just reminds me of Deep Purple's 'Knocking at your Back Door', which contains the marvellous lyric :
So they put her on the hitlist,
of a common, cunning liguist,
a Master of many tongues.
Now she eases gently from her Aston to her Bentley.
Suddenly she feels so young....
Do you think AWTD is a hip-hop track, Alex ? I'm astonished if you think it is.
It's each to their own, I know - but I think this track is modern yet epic, whereas the Garbage track was just bland.
It's not the lyrics that bother me. To me it doesn't matter if the comments about Bond are expressed in a verbal style which fits a musical genre - 'gangsta' rap - rather than in Bond's own style of language. But what DOES matter to me is that the MUSIC and the production values are simply dreadful... Musically, imho, this track doesn't work as a Bond theme and it doesn't cut it as anything ELSE, either... in ANY genre! Okay, I can vaguely see where they wanted to go with it... but maybe the creative overseers at Eon should have teamed up Alicia Keys with people who would have REALLY known what to do with this kind of rap/rock hybrid, e.g. Rage Against The Machine (cf. 'Killing In The Name')
The Bond themes which have been hitherto regarded as the least successful, such as TMWTGG and DAD, have always had redeeming qualities. I fear that this is not the case with 'Another Way To Die'. In the messy TMWTGG theme, John Barry's attempt to keep up-to-date and to marry his own established Bond sound with the style of the big orchestral 'freak-outs' introduced in Wings' LALD was, at best, unconvincing: but at least the TMWTGG theme provided a number of evocative action and romance cues for the movie's incidental score - and it lent itself, as well, to a cool ragtime arrangement on the soundtrack album! As for the DAD track, it lacked a melody, but Madonna's precision and charisma as a vocalist were a saving grace and the track just about passed muster as a serviceable techno piece.
Unfortunately, 'Another Way To Die' doesn't hang together at all, and despite a few interesting intentions it falls apart in a shambles... Alicia Keys' talents aren't enough to rescue it. Of course, it's far too late for a re-write or re-edit: the best that can be hoped, now, is that the titles sequence against which the damned thing has got to be played turns out to be clever enough in itself to offer some sort of contextual damage limitation. And let's hope that QOS's incidental score provides plenty of compensation and stakes out its own ground independently of this lame theme.